You can bus to Banff cheaper or drive from Vancouver faster. But to fully experience Canada’s first national park, ride the train in a luxury dome car

by Rob Howatson

It’s a grey dawn at Vancouver’s Pacific Central Station. Groggy tourists climb aboard their cars and collapse into assigned seats, as the train lurches in the deserted railyard and begins rolling down the platform. Unlike the ticker-tape bon voyage of a cruise-liner, there is no brass band send-off. The only ceremony comes from a handful of hastily assembled Rocky Mountaineer Railtours (RMR) employees, who position themselves honour- guard style alongside the tracks and wave.

As we slip into the Grandview Cut and exit Vancouver, the clouds part, as if on cue, and the sun streams down, illuminating the Fraser Valley pastureland in all its dew-besprinkled glory. The mountains here are no more than humps on the flood plain, but they’re covered in trees and, given that it’s autumn, are an explosion of fiery hues. Still acquiring my train legs, I stagger to the front of the car where there is a small outdoor vestibule; here, passengers take turns getting slapped about by the wind and subjecting themselves to the full symphony of creaks and groans the train makes at its maximum cruise speed of 72 km/hr. It’s an exhilarating ride. But I’m still wondering how this two-day Vancouver to Banff, Rocky Mountaineer Railtour (RMR) is going to live up to its brochure promise of being “the most spectacular train trip in the world.”

CANADA'S ROCKY MOUNTAINEER Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.”

Back inside the warmth and relative quiet of my 1954 heritage coach, the onboard attendant distributes snacks to the livening guests. I chat with a retired telecom worker from Hawaii about her vacation in Mongolia as our 22-car-long “consist” (industry jargon for train) abandons its carefree clickety-clack pace of the alluvial delta for a more cautious climb through the Fraser Canyon. Just before Skuzzy Creek, the train slows to a photo-op crawl and we gaze down into the 34-metre-wide gorge of Hell’s Gate – the only section of the Fraser River that earns a dreaded Maytag 6 rating on the whitewater charts. This is the churning broth explorer Simon Fraser described in 1808 as a place where “no human being should enter.” During the construction of the transcontinental railway 74 years later, workers ventured into the canyon to dangle from cliffs and stuff gunpowder into drilled holes, all the while praying they’d got the charge right.

At Lytton, we cross over the Fraser and onto a flank of the Thompson, which calls for another abrupt scenery change. Trees thin out to reveal buff-coloured bluffs and Louis L’Amour vistas. Tina, our onboard attendant – who has an impressive ability to pour drinks without missing her narration cues – dons her mike to inform us that the rock sheds (protective canopies) we’re passing through are part of the route known as Avalanche Alley – eight kilometres of slide detection fences and white-knuckle ruminating that prompt me to move to the car’s leeward side. I prefer to focus on the old telegraph poles that assume various drunken poses alongside us; the creosote stragglers once carried Morse code messages to operators in nearby shacks. Linemen jotted down transmissions on pieces of paper and posted them to a pole so that passing engineers could grab them from the windows of their moving trains.

By the time we reach Ashcroft, our train has clambered up onto B.C.’s interior plateau and the terrain has become stunningly arid. In fact, the ranching community is one of the driest places in Canada with less than 25 centimetres of annual rainfall. Sandy cliffs bleed every shade of the pastel spectrum – from rusty-looking stains of ironstone to purple and green patches of sagebrush. Other cliffs fold and undulate like walls of frozen mud. One particularly dramatic escarpment sprouts pillars from its base – an army of hoodoos rising from the scree.

Kamloops lights up red in the sunset like a Martian lunarscape. We bunk here because there are no sleeper cars on RMR trains. Instead, buses whisk us to accommodations like the Comfort Inn, leaving us just enough time to shower before we board the shuttles for RMR’s dinner cabaret. Yes, the rail tour company has branched out into the musical theatre business. And at the Colombo Lodge Italian Cultural Centre we chow down on a hearty buffet and watch a talented local cast croon and cornball their way through Tales from the Rails, a loose version of the Billy Miner story. The next morning, 21 km out of Kamloop’s station, we pass the spot where, in 1906, Miner and two fellow train robbers tried to intercept a large sum of money destined for San Francisco’s earthquake victims. (They were thwarted by a scheduling change; the train they hit yielded a paltry $15.50 and some liver pills.) Today, there isn’t much to look at on this lonely stretch of rails – no shrine to the gentleman bandit who coined the phrase “Hands Up!” – nothing but the same beguiling ranch country that the 1982 film The Grey Fox used for its account of the elderly legend, who died in a Georgia state prison 88 years ago.

As cowboy country fades behind us, we enter the Shuswap Lake district. The labyrinthine, H-shaped lake and houseboat renters’ delight has spawned every conceivable support service – including pizza delivered to one’s vessel by speedboat. This image of a Mercury-outboard ferrying Hawaiian specials out of Sicamous has me glancing up and down the aisle for our next meal cart. But there is none, because on this second day of the trip RMR has upgraded this travel writer to Gold Leaf Service, which means I’m comfortably ensconced in a bi-level dome car, sun filtering in through the car’s Plexiglas ceiling. For each repast, I merely descend a spiral staircase to the dining area’s thickly upholstered booths and await the chef’s latest creations.

The cramped but resourceful galleys successfully plate elegant courses such as Alberta striploin in a red wine demi-glace and fusilli pasta in a dried banana maple cream sauce. Gold Leaf is clearly the way to go (bearing in mind that with fares starting at $1,179, it’s twice as expensive as Red Leaf). My timing for the dome car move is also perfect; for, as we hit Revelstoke, the geography throws us a new ripple – mountain ranges. Lots of them. The Selkirks, the Purcells, the Beaverfoot range, all in quick succession. Peaks 2,700 metres high warp through the bevelled glass roof, leaning over the tracks like giants inspecting an ant trail.

I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill.

Meekly, we dart into a cave, the eight-km-long Connaught Tunnel, built in 1916 to avoid the heavy snowfalls of Rogers Pass. It’s a long haul through solid rock but not as impressive as the nearby Mount Macdonald Tunnel, which covers almost 14 km (North America’s longest). Our attendant deadpans that in frontier days, female passengers thwarted men trying to steal kisses in the dark by clamping hatpins between their lips. I don’t hear any mid-mountain yelps so I assume modern travellers are a tamer bunch – unlike the wife of Canada’s first prime minister, Agnes Macdonald. During a trip aboard the transcontinental in 1886, she insisted on riding atop the train’s front bumper. The engineer played along, but he must have been sweating bullets. The first lady had chosen the steepest section of track to be out on the cowcatcher – the drop between Hector and Field known as the Big Hill. Before it was replaced by the Spiral Tunnels, this was the CPR’s weakest link for 22 years, a 4.5 per cent grade (twice today’s allowable steepness) that forced long freights to break down into smaller trains to tackle the plunge.

We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area.

Transfixed by the sight of the 1929 Stoney Creek Bridge arching its steel body over the cascading waters of Mount Tupper, I’m glued to the window with each braided river we pass, each jade-coloured lake. And as the train labours up the snow-dusted approach to Mount Stephen and we breach 1,625 metres, I step through the automated sliding door onto the viewing platform – like going from a fireside lounge to a walk-in freezer. My car mates, Laurie and Rachel, stand at the chrome railing and study the small ditch that trickles alongside the tracks. “We’re coming up on the Continental Divide,” explains Laurie. “Watch the flow of the water. When we hit the divide it’s going to stop babbling west and start bubbling east.” That’s the significance of this, the highest point in our journey, which separates the Pacific watershed from the Atlantic one. Although when we actually roll past the commemorative marker on the border between B.C.’s Yoho National Park and Alberta’s Banff National Park, we can’t see the ditch water because it is sealed beneath a thin scrim of ice. Nonetheless, the huddled group lets out a muffled cheer through scarves and zipped-up collars.

The train immediately picks up speed as we begin our approach into Banff. We soon pass through the Valley of the Ten Peaks, a towering picket fence of summits that march off into the distance. As majestic as they are, however, they pale in comparison to Mount Temple – the most massive and highest peak in the Lake Louise area. Like so many of the breathtaking spires we encounter, it is a helmet-shaped wonder etched with powdery horizontal lines and capped with a hanging glacier. Its grandiose hulk stands alone above the forest, defiant. In 1955, seven climbers died on its southwest ridge (Canada’s most costly mountaineering accident), and the cliffs of its north face were left unscaled until the 1960s.

We arrive in Banff at dusk, feeling humbled by the awesome display of nature and eager to de-train so we can experience the Rocky Mountain thrill on foot. Our journey has transported us from sea level to the top of the continent and lived up to all of its brochure promises, except one – we didn’t get to see a lot of wildlife.

No sooner has this occurred to me, though, than a large, beefy elk saunters across the station parking lot. Welcome to the park that rail built.

>> The A-trains: 10 Dreamy Rail Vacations to Stoke Your Boiler

Photos: Rocky Mountaineer

by James Glave

“If you’re extra lucky, you’ll get yourselves invited to a kitchen party,” Terri Shea told Elle and me in the days leading up to our Newfoundland vacation. “Friends and neighbours get together and play instruments and sing and tell stories and drink. That’s the real deal out there.”

Shea, a close friend who hails from “the Rock” but now lives just down the street from our home on Bowen Island, B.C., had just “Screeched in” the two of us in her living room. As per Newfoundland custom, the wife and I had each downed a shot of cheap rum and kissed a frozen salmon. The coho was a West Coast stand-in for the cod that Newfoundlanders traditionally pull out of the fridge for the ceremony that awards honourary citizenship to those who, like us, “come from aways.”

So we’d necked with a fish. We’d been made titular locals and had the certificates to prove it – direct from the Internet via inkjet printer. But we both knew we were Newfoundlanders on paper only. We wanted the real deal.

Little did we know that on the last night of our future trip, we’d not only track down a bona fide kitchen party – complete with an old guy crooning fishermen’s ballads out of a ragged coil-bound notebook – we’d do ourselves even better. We’d actually host it. But then, we had a little help from Ken Sooley.

[Newfoundland Kitchen Party]

Porch party at the Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

“We’re providing a brand-new concept in experiential travel,” the 48-year-old president of CapeRace Cultural Adventures had said of his new venture, which was just wrapping up its first full season. “We’ve designed a way for people to become integrated into three local communities, and each has a different take on the Newfoundland lifestyle.” In other words, Sooley’s company could offer what Shea’s gag certificates could not – admission to the inner circle of a variety of small outport communities up and down Newfoundland’s eastern shores, complete with meaningful and spontaneous interactions between visitors and locals. Indeed, the CapeRace experience remains unique in North America, delivering an uncanned and authentic sense of place and its people. So much so, in fact, that National Geographic Traveler magazine last year declared it “one of the Top 50 tours of a lifetime.”

The appeal? Sooley connects his clients with “fixers,” the kind of on-the-ground contacts a journalist might hire to establish local sources and get the inside scoop while on assignment in a far-off country. Want to try squid jigging in a working fishboat? Just call Jerry or Elizabeth. They’ll pop over, introduce you to the neighbours – here’s hoping you can understand a word they are saying – and suggest whom you might call and what you might offer to pay.

Hi-fi at E.J. Sooley house / courtesy James Glave

And so, for 10 days in mid-July, Sooley’s company would “embed” Elle and me in a couple of remote fishing villages, some of which look much as they did in the 19th century when the salted cod trade was at its peak. We’d bunk down in heritage homes that Sooley had purchased and restored over a period of several years, one in the historic Battery neighbourhood in St. John’s, the others in the village of Heart’s Delight and the town of Bonavista – houses as authentic as the communities they stand in.

The E.J. Sooley house in Heart’s Delight, for example, belongs to Sooley’s grandfather. It still contains the original enamel appliances and fixtures, right down to the squeaky cast-iron beds and bare-bulb kitchen light we’d switch on and off via a dangling string. Meanwhile, up in Bonavista, the marvellously quirky Thomas Mouland house once belonged to a man involved in the great sealing disaster of 1914 – a dark chapter of the province’s history in which 78 sealers were inadvertently abandoned on the ice floes to perish in a blizzard.

The cold North Atlantic is just a stone’s throw from the front porch of the Thomas Mouland house, but the closest we’ve come to it so far is the “bergy bit” that Sooley has stashed in the freezer. He recovered the microwave-oven-sized piece of ice off the beach some months prior. On our first of three nights in Bonavista, it has become my routine to chip a few chunks off the salvaged berg and drop them in my tumbler of “Screech” rum, which I’m enjoying on the porch this evening with Lloyd – our designated local contact and Sooley’s sole contractor.

“You know, when we was fixing this place up,” says Lloyd, “there were 13 layers of linoleum on the kitchen floor. When one piece wore out, the old guy just laid himself a fresh piece right on top. It took two weeks to get it all up.” Lloyd decided to pay homage to the Mouland’s century-long chronicle of renovations. And so, each step of the building’s narrow staircase now showcases a different pattern of flooring, one for each decade it lay hidden underfoot.

After a few minutes, Lloyd and I are joined by Dorman,* a neighbour from across the street who owns a nearby convenience store. As the three of us shoot the breeze, a grey whale follows suit in the background, blowing plumes of salt spray into the sky a quarter-mile offshore.

Dorman, 57, explains how it used to be around here. “With the winter starms we get these days, you can har the floor of the ocean rumbling and groaning-like.” He wears dress slacks with a starched shirt the colour of Dijon mustard, his hair Brylcreemed back. “It’s like the whole bottom of the sea is roaring and heavin’. Mam said you never used to har that. It’s changin’.”

Bonavista's Thomas Mouland house / courtesy James Glave

The sea isn’t the only thing in flux here on the brink of the North Atlantic. Lloyd and Dorman and I look out across the fields of swaying long grass, past the “flakes” – spindly replica cod drying racks the local historic society has installed for the benefit of tourists – and toward the houses scattered here and there along the gravel waterfront road that passes in front of us.

“This whole field used to be full of houses, see?” says Dorman, waving his arm at the emptiness.

“What happened to them all?” I ask.

“The people died or moved. Thar houses all either fell down or was knocked down.”

About 3,700 hardy souls call Bonavista home today, but like many other towns across Newfoundland, its population has been shrinking since 1992. That was the year the federal government placed a moratorium on cod fishing in an effort to protect those few fish that remained. With the stroke of a pen, a resource and an industry already beyond the point of exhaustion was legally pronounced dead. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. The province’s economy had become so dependent on the sea that many were forced to pack up and leave, an out-migration that continues to this day. Some 5,000 Newfoundlanders still move “aways” each year, including many of the younger generation, like our neighbour back home, Terri Shea. The remaining population is greying quickly; children represent only 15 per cent of the island’s overall head count.

“It was so different when I was nine or 10,” says Dorman. “This here main road was jammed with people, all of them takin’ in the catch, splittin’ it, houses and stores and sheds all over. And this road here back of us was a railroad track. They’d bring in coal on the ships and load it up on rail cars and deliver it around the neighbourhood, see?”

I almost can, though the tracks are long gone. The lane in question – well above the level of the surrounding fields – is more roadbed than road.

“And that old wharf?” The crumbling pier is just over the fence beyond the front yard. “My brother’s best friend drowned right thar,” says Dorman. “Mam says he was eatin’ a molasses sandwich and jumping ’tween the dories. Went right in. And he was gan. Just like ’dat.”

“He couldn’t swim?” I ask, incredulous.

“None of us could,” he replies, then reflects. “There’s a lot of history thar.”

Indeed there is. And without Ken Sooley and Lloyd making the introductions, I wouldn’t have heard the half of it.

CapeRace appeals to a fairly specific kind of traveller, the sort who doesn’t mind venturing outside his or her comfort zone once in awhile. (The folks who were across the street from us in Heart’s Delight, for example, have a habit of setting up lawn chairs to watch the new arrivals. Evidently, there’s not a lot else to do.) But then, the public’s appetite for such raw experiences is on the rise.

“Ever since 9/11, people have been searching for something deeper,” says Patty Morgan, executive director of the Travel and Tourism Research Association, an industry trade group based in Boise, Idaho. “They don’t want the Holiday Inn with the pool and the continental breakfast.” And though he has not heard of anything else quite like CapeRace in North America, says Peter Yesawich, whose firm Ypartnership tracks emerging travel trends, “the appeal of this kind of deep authenticity has certainly grown. And I only see it increasing,” he adds, “particularly among the Millenniums – sub-boomer travellers in their late twenties and early thirties.”

The key to Sooley’s operation is his self-published Traveller’s Diary guidebook, available only to CapeRace clients. It’s a compilation of local lore and essential info specific to the towns on the CapeRace loop – such as the rules of the classic Newfoundland card game 120s – plus the home numbers of Sooley’s local contacts. “The neighbours are an interesting bunch and may drop by,” he notes in one chapter. “Tell Harv I sent you and ask him about the unusual bingo games he hosts on Monday nights.” (Apparently, with help from Sooley, the wiley pub owner came up with an ingenious scheme to bring in the town’s women, many of whom have husbands working aways in the Alberta oil patch: he doles out adult novelties as prizes.)

Sooley has certainly picked the right place to launch his new-era travel experiment. This trip is my first foray into Newfoundland, and I’ve never felt so much a foreigner inside my own country. Our youngest province is a region apart – a time warp to a more innocent age, largely untouched by the soul-draining crush of mass tourism. It’s a place where the culture has evolved in isolation from the rest of Canada, the result of small outport communities that for centuries were effectively cut off from one another by fierce winters.

As for the Newfoundland dialect, it can be as impenetrable as the province’s harsh interior landscape: the thousands of kilometres of scrub and ponds known simply as the Barrens. Then there are the mannerisms. Newfoundland men greet each other with a quick left-to-right sideways nod, and I know I’m starting to fit in when I experience the tradition first-hand outside the Bonavista Foodland grocery. Considering Newfoundland’s relative accessibility today, it remains one of the most unpackaged and unpretentious places on the continent. Yet for all its distinctive charms, it is refreshingly open to outsiders. That reality was only underscored on 9/11, when the small town of Gander opened its doors to the 6,500 unscheduled guests who found themselves stranded here when U.S.-bound flights were diverted by the closure of American airspace.

Catered "Light House" picnic / courtesy James Glave

We caught our first taste of this legendary hospitality in Heart’s Delight – almost halfway through our 10-day sojourn, after three days traipsing the cathedrals, back streets and hilltop cannon batteries of St. John’s. Elizabeth and Jerry, our designated local contacts, were still travelling back from Nova Scotia when we arrived at the charming oceanfront E.J. Sooley cottage. We’d feared we’d be on our own in this blip-sized outport, with no TV, radio or board games, not even a pub or coffee shop to show up at, and rain in the forecast to boot. The only available source of diversion: a pre-stereo record player tucked away in a cabinet and a copy of Reels and Jigs of Newfoundland – one of a clutch of profoundly scratched-up old LPs, the novelty of which wore thin after just a few cacophonous minutes. But then Donna Reid knocked on the door and introduced herself as Sooley’s cousin.

“Say, you know, the capelin are supposed to star’ rollin’ any day now. Would you like to go out tammara morning to see if we can see ’em?”

The capelin are a needle-thin fish, relatives of the freshwater smelt. For much of its life, the species lives in deep water, but in June and July its numbers “roll” up on Newfoundland’s beaches to spawn by the tens of thousands. The locals show up to watch and pull them out of the surf in buckets, either to smoke and eat or dig into their gardens as fertilizer. The roll is apparently quite a spectacle – a frenzied oceanic orgy attended by hungry gulls, seals and sometimes whales – and certainly one of the highlights of the year for the people of Heart’s Delight, population 663. And, said Reid, as luck would have it, the procreation party might well kick off tomorrow morning.

The dawn was just breaking as Reid drove us down a rutted, unmarked dirt road to a bluff overlooking a quiet cove. We peered out through the wet windshield.

Though Reid assured us that conditions were perfect for getting it on capelin-style – it’s raining, she said, and a frigid north wind was blowing down from Labrador – evidently the fish weren’t feeling particularly frisky that morning.

A neighbour pulled up alongside and rolled down the window. “Hey, Donna,” he said, “see anyting out thar?”

“I think I can see ’em offshore, the water looks dark, but they’re not comin’ in,” our host replied.

“Funny that, you’d think they would.”

“Yeash, we’ve got the narth wind,” she noted.

“Yeash,” the friend answered with a chuckle. “The wind we don’t wont don’t even bring the capelin in.”

The following morning, we were about to motor out of the driveway for the long haul up the Bonavista Peninsula when Jerry and Elizabeth – who is another of Sooley’s cousins – stopped by. They’d just returned from their vacation and were hoping to catch us to say hello before we left. We chatted for a bit, and though we’d had a great time in their village, doing not much of anything except wandering the bluffs, picking wild strawberries and taking the odd day trip, they felt bad for mostly missing us. They wanted to send us off properly.

“Can we talk you into taking some moose sausages with you?” Jerry offered. “They’re really, really good ones.”

If there were such a thing as an official protein census of Newfoundland freezers, moose would doubtless come out in the count way ahead of hamburger. The beasts have thrived here since the first pair was introduced from Nova Scotia more than a century back, and hunting them is for many a way of life. The population is now so healthy that the province’s long-haul truckers weld heavy steel-tube grills – called “moose cages” – to the business end of their rigs to minimize the damage of inevitable collisions.

“That would be lovely,” I told Jerry. “If you can spare one or two links, we can probably tuck ’em into the top of the cooler.”

“Great, I’ll just run over and get ’em.”

Days later, having consumed over the preceding 72 hours somewhere between eight and 10 pounds of moose sausage, moose steak and moose burgers, I am sitting out on the porch in Bonavista watching the light fade. I sip on my Screech and listen to the wind blow through the tall grass that surrounds our tiny house and the pop and crack of the ice in my glass that was last liquid around 11,000 years back.

My cellphone breaks the peace. It’s Lloyd on the line: “How you gettin’ on over thar this evenin’?” he asks.

“Very well, thanks.”

“Good. Say, a group of us boys was thinkin’ of comin’ by tammara night to play a little music thar. D’y think that’d be alright?”

“I think that would be just fine with us, Lloyd,” I say. “Just fine.”

Author James Glave

In addition to being a “titular Newfie,” James Glave is also a former Outside magazine senior editor and the author of Almost Green: How I Built an Eco-Shed, Ditched My SUV, Alienated the Inlaws, and Changed My Life (Greystone Books, 2008; $22).

An interview with author James Glave and an excerpt from his recent book can be enjoyed at MyWestworld.com/jamesglave

Listen in on more “embedded vacation” Maritimes hilarity (a little lobster fishing, “tonging” for oysters or moonshine making, anyone?). MyWestworld.com/podcasts.

the rock-onnoitre experts

CapeRace Cultural Adventures offers 10-day, nine-night packages, including rental car, exclusive use of three coastal homes and a custom guidebook. Circuits begin in St. John’s and conclude in Bonavista, departing every four days between April and October. U.S. $1,495 per person based on four-person occupancy; U.S. $2,600 based on two-person occupancy. Kids under 16 travel free. mail@caperace.com

See also: Bowen Island: One Man’s Eco Quest.

Lead photo courtesy Ken Sooley

The raven ranks among the world’s most intelligent creatures, displaying high learning ability and use of logic for solving problems, in some tests even surpassing chimpanzees. (courtesy Kerry Banks)

Ravens may be common in the Rockies, but they remain a novelty to me. I find them to be impressive birds: large, intelligent, playful and talented mimics. I remember sitting beside a beach in Tofino one afternoon listening to a raven imitate a dripping faucet. The same bird then made me jump when he did an uncanny and eerie impression of a human voice, calling “Tommy. Tommy.” Actually, it sounded just like the vocal in The Who’s song, so maybe the raven had been listening to the tune on someone’s stereo.

I stroll down the main drag, Banff Avenue, which may be the only street in town not named after an animal. The critter roll call includes Squirrel Street, Caribou Street, Lynx Street, Wolverine Street, Whiskey Jack Crescent and Porcupine Place. The town itself is named after Banffshire, Scotland, the birthplace of  Lord Strathcona and George Stephen, two major financiers of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Able to accomodate 1,700 guests in 700 rooms, the baronial Banff Springs Hotel has been described as having “corridors for the invalid, turrets for the astronomer and balconies for lovers.”

My destination is the Banff Springs Hotel, a gothic castle at the south end of town. And the man behind the creation of this five-star luxury hotel: William Van Horne, General Manager of Canadian Pacific Railways, who viewed the hot springs near the railway station of Banff as a potential tourist attraction. His vision was fuelled by the philosophy “If we can’t export the scenery, we will import the tourists.” Hence, in 1886, Van Horne commissioned Bruce Price of New York, one of the foremost architects of the day, to draw up plans for a hotel to be built above the confluence of the Bow and Spray Rivers overlooking the Bow Valley. Construction began in the spring of 1887, and the palatial resort opened on June 1, 1888. At the time it was reportedly the largest hotel in the world.

Like any grand old hotel, the Banff Springs is said to have its share of ghosts. For example, there are frequent sightings of Sam Macauley, a bellman who died here in 1976. It is believed that he still haunts the upper floors of the hotel. Several people have identified him as a real person and have spoken to him. But then, suddenly, he disappears right in front of their eyes.

And too there is the story of infamous Room 873, which no longer exists, though the hotel does have rooms 872 and 874. According to the legend, a family was murdered in Room 873, and strange things kept taking place after the room was cleaned up and re-opened, including a mirror hung in the room that displayed the fingerprints of the little girl who died there. No matter how many times the staff cleaned the mirror, the fingerprints constantly reappeared. Coupled with the reports of guests who claimed to see the family on occasion, the management decided to close off and wall up the room. Today, staff and guests still reported seeing the spirits of the family near where the room has been closed off.

I spend a couple of hours looking around the hotel and taking photos from various vantage points. I don’t encounter any ghosts, but in the hotel’s flower garden I do find a ghostly coloured moth that looks like it fluttered right out of the pages of a children’s book of fables.

Not all moths are nocturnal, as is clear from this photo. But the identity of this silvery species found in the flower garden outside the Banff Springs Hotel is a mystery to me. Does anyone know the answer?

By the time I meet up with Masters in a coffee shop back on Banff Avenue, I have a headache, the result of tramping around like a maniac in the high altitude air. (At 1,463 metres, Banff is the town with the highest elevation in Canada.) Mysterious as always, Masters refuses to tell me what he did all afternoon. We drive over to the Pox, er the Fox Hotel, where, thankfully we find that the desk clerk’s face is not melting. She has an Australian accent, like about 70 per cent of the people we have met so far who work in the Rockies’ service industry.

Dinner is at the upscale Maple Leaf Grille and Lounge. The Maple Leaf was recently awarded “Best Resort Restaurant, North America” at the United Kingdom’s 2009 Hardy’s Skiing and Snowboarding Awards. I’m not exactly sure what this means, but it is proudly noted on the restaurant’s website. I order the barbecued rib-eye; Masters opts for the Wild B.C. Salmon. “We are in Alberta—the land of beef. Why are you ordering B.C. seafood?” I ask.

“I felt like salmon,” he replies.

The front balcony of the Banff Springs Hotel looks out over the Bow River and the gap between Mt. Rundle and Tunnel Mountain.

“OK, salmon boy. Let’s head back to the Pox. According to our official itinerary we have to be in Lake Louise by  8 a.m. for our hike.”

(To be continued …)

Part I, II, III

Photos: Kerry Banks

The Spray Lakes Reservoir began as a series of small lakes. In 1951, a hydroelectric dam was then built, raising the water levels to create one beautiful lake. Today, this 88-kilometre stretch of water is used both for recreation and to generate power for Canmore and the rest of the Bow River Valley.

From Three Nuns to the 1988 Winter Olympics: Canmore to Banff

The metal jangle of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar serenades us as we motor through a corridor of giant stone crags. It’s a beautiful morning, clear and crisp, and there are dozens of photo opportunities. But once again it’s a tight schedule. Though bound for Banff, on way we’re stopping in Canmore, where the road into town descends sharply for a spectacular vista of the valley and Canmore’s signature landmark: The Three Sisters. Originally called the Three Nuns, these three peaks are now known by the locals as Faith, Hope and Charity.

Formerly a coal-mining town, Canmore has experienced a boom since the 1988 Winter Olympics – when it served as the site of the cross-country and biathlon events. Although Masters is generally vague about his past, he now admits to spending time here some 20 years ago. Evidently it was a tough place back then, he recalls, and the town’s main social hub, the Canmore Hotel, “was a good place to have a beer or get into a fight.” Most of its young people were here because rent was cheap and the town was close to the ski hills around Banff and Lake Louise. But now Masters wants to see how the town has changed. He expects he won’t recognize it.

Besides coffee mugs, Seattle-based Authentic Hendrix also markets a Jimi Hendrix lava lamp, a Jimi Hendrix afghan patterned after the musician's second album, Axis: Bold As Love, and Jimi Hendrix infant wear, including an “Are You Experienced?” diaper cover that comes in three sizes.

A stroll down the main drag confirms his worst suspicions. There are a lot of gift shops. In fact, just about every second store qualifies. “Very boutiquey,” he sniffs. He walks more quickly, his disgust growing. Then something catches my eye in one of the windows. I tell him to wait, and a few minutes later emerge with my first souvenir from the trip – a psychedelic Jimi Hendrix coffee mug that proclaims “Do Your Thing” on the inside rim. I’m pretty sure Henrix didn’t coin the phrase. Still, this is the first Jimi Hendrix mug I’ve ever seen. It’s made in China and sells for a ridiculous $13.95.

We resume walking and Masters spots the Canmore Hotel. “It’s still here,” he says, surprised, “and it looks pretty much the same.” Inside is the dark atmosphere and yeasty smell of your classic Canadian tavern. There are pool tables, a horseshoe-shaped bar, and even though it’s not yet noon, several patrons who look like they’ve been here awhile. “It doesn’t look like they’ve changed the upholstery in the last 20 years,” concludes Masters.

“Well, I’ve never been here before, but I’m sure  at least one thing is different from 20 years ago.”

“What?”

“I bet that they didn’t have that back then,” I note, pointing to the “No Smoking” sign affixed to the front door. 

As much as it has evolved into a tourist haven since 1988, the recent economic recession has hit Canmore hard; we pass several massive resort developments standing unfinished as we roll out of town. It’s not exactly a boulevard of broken dreams, but it is a sobering dose of reality.

Back on the highway, I pull out the itinerary. I don’t have my reading glasses on and I mistakenly tell Masters we’ll be staying tonight at “the Pox Hotel.” He quickly corrects me, “That’s the Fox Hotel.” (He probably stayed up all night memorizing the itinerary.) “It would be interesting though,” he adds, “if it was actually the Pox Hotel and when we arrive the desk clerk’s face is rotting off.”

Aspen, the leaves of which turn bright yellow in the fall, are the staple food of beaver. The tree's buds and shoots are also favourites of moose, while its bark and underlying layer of cambium are eaten by elk and deer in winter.

I scan for more names in the blurry pages and announce my distorted findings. “I see that tomorrow night we’ll be staying at the relaxing Migraine Lake Lodge. The day after that is a pleasant hike to the Lake Agony Teahouse.”

Masters laughs. “It all sounds delightful.”

We make it to Banff in time for lunch at the Coyote Deli and Grill, where our greeter informs us we’re 40 minutes late. It’s a rather pointless observation since the place is half empty. Fortunately, the chow is better than the service.

Banff is a town I’m more familiar with. I first came here in the late 1970s during a cross-Canada roadtrip with my pal High McEachern. We were camping, and while we paid our night’s fee, the ranger told us that bears had been spotted in the vicinity. He wasn’t kidding. The next morning, as we cooked breakfast over our fire, a big black bear wandered into the campsite area, looking for a snack. He disdainfully knocked coolers over with his massive paws as made his way between sites. We tossed our frying pan in the trunk and jumped in the car. It seemed a reasonable response, but the other campers chose a different tactic: they hurled rocks at the bear and yelled. Luckily for them, it worked. The bear left, but it could have been a bloody scene.

There are no bears on the menu today, but we are scheduled to join another trail ride. “I’ve decided that I am too sore to do two more hours in the saddle,” I tell Masters. “Besides there are some things I want to see in Banff. He agrees and we cancel the cowboy outing, arranging to split up and meet again at 5 p.m.. I set off down the street headed for the Banff Springs Hotel, but as is so often the case, I get distracted.

(To be continued …)

Part I, II

Photos: Kerry Banks

A popular haunt for X-country skiers, hikers and mountain bikers, the Smith-Dorrien Trail is a gravel road that winds through the heart of one of the wildest and most scenic landscapes in Alberta's Kananaskis Country.

Back in the car, plotting our course to Mt. Engadine Lodge, I say: “Everyone on a roadtrip has to have a role. Why don’t you be the  take-charge guy.”

“Who are you going to be?” asks Masters.

“I’ll be the distracted, laid-back guy. I’ll be Good Time Charlie.”

Luckily, Masters consulted the road map while I was shooting photos of the lake, and confidently predicts we’ll be at our destination soon. He’s right. From out of nowhere, the road to Mt. Engadine Lodge suddenly appears on our right.

The lodge is a major surprise. I was expecting antlers, cowboy paraphernalia and massive wooden beams and split-pine finishes everywhere. And there is a lot of wood, but nothing else is predictable. For starters, the place is not a working-ranch-cum-guest house but a sophisticated boutique backcountry operation operated by Chris and Shari-Lynn Williams, a pair of professional innkeepers. (Chris, a former air-traffic controller, and Shari-Lynn, an accountant, left their day jobs to run resorts a decade ago.)

The lodge's dining room windows afford a spectacular view of the Rockies rising sharply across Moose Meadows – a natural habitat for coyotes, moose, elk, deer and beavers.

Before coming to Mt. Engadine(www.mountengadine.com) in 2007, the couple worked for five years at the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino, B.C, where Chris was the chief concierge and Shari-Lynn the front-office manager. The well-travelled couple have also worked as innkeepers in Vermont, New Mexico, Cape Cod, on Prince Edward Island and on St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Here at Mt. Engadine they also supervised a major renovation, with the lodge’s nine rooms transformed from dorm-style bunk beds to luxurious suites complete with king-size beds, living areas and private baths. And the rooms are now named (and decorated) after indigenous animals, which are easier to remember than numbers. I’ve been assigned the Moose room, which is appropriate since the lodge is reputedly the best place in the Kananaskis to spot moose. The ungainly beasts like to congregate in a mud wallow adjacent to the property, supposedly attracted by the minerals in the soil.

I have a half-hour before dinner so I wander off down the road to a nearby bridge to take photos. The lodge has an incredible setting, on a hill overlooking a broad meadow and surrounded on all sides by soaring mountains. I’m enjoying the peace and solitude when two tour buses suddenly pull up and disgorge a pack of noisy German tourists. Their timing could not be better: minutes after they unload, a mother moose and her calf begin approaching across the meadow. The sight silences the crowd.

Spray Valley Provincial Park (along with neighbouring Peter Lougheed Provincial Park): more than 100 km of hiking and mountain biking trails, plus canoeing and kayaking on easily accessible lakes and rivers.

It’s occasions like this that make me wonder what European tourists think of Canada. This is the first moose I’ve ever seen in the wild and I’ve lived here all my life. This bunch of Bavarians may well be under the mistaken impression that you can order up exotic wildlife here at will.

_______________________________________________

“A visit to this mud wallow, where the moose

come every day about now, is like a once-a-day vitamin,”

says Engadine manager Chris Williams.

________________________________________________

I make it back just in time for dinner. The roast chicken is delicious, the wine terrific. Masters and I share a communal table with a group of Americans touring Alberta with an outfit called Country Walkers. The company (www.countrywalkers.com) offers 75 worldwide walking itineraries, and on this one, local guide Dave Holder spearheads daily, rigorous hikes into the wilds. Judging by the speed with which the day’s survivors are wolfing down their food, all that walking must work up a serious appetite.

After dinner, we talk with Chris about Mt. Engadine’s niche in the backcountry market, and how the level of personal service and attention to detail is what he thinks sets it apart. For example, he hand picks the wines, seeking out moderately priced, tasty stuff that most guests will not be familiar with. Likewise, the beer is from small, local Alberta breweries. And during the summer months, he brings in musicians – overlooked Canadian talents such as Suzie Vinnick, recipient of the 2008 Canadian Maple Blues Award as Female Vocalist of the Year. “The musicians stay here over the weekend and interact with the guests,” he says. “It’s all very casual.”

Local moose gather daily at the mud wallow alongside Alberta's Mt. Engadine Lodge. The site is rich in selenium, a nutrient the animals need for bone development.

The overall goal is to provide visitors with a unique experience. Of course, the wildlife also contributes. Later that night, as I’m savouring a glass of wine on the outdoor deck, a large owl makes a screeching descent into a nearby pine tree. This intrusion instantly attracts the attention of the country walkers, who are diligently keeping track of Canadian fauna spotted on their trip. They’re still debating whether the bird is a great horned owl or not when I finally stumble off to my Moose room and climb into my Moose bed.

Part I, III

Photographs: Kerry Banks

“Just give her a kick in the belly,” says Dayleen. Our trail guide is growing impatient with my mare’s plodding pace. But I feel sympathy for Hazel, who is 16 and has been humping tourists through these Alberta hills for a decade. If the mare wants to take her time, it’s all right with me. I’m in no great hurry, and staying a few paces back keeps me clear of the goofy antics of Champ, who is second in our three-horse procession.

____________________________________________

“We are a few hours into a five-day roadtrip

through the Alberta Rockies and, just to make it

perfectly clear that we are in cowboy country,

our hosts have made sure our adventure kicks off

with a two-hour trail ride.”

__________________________________________

It appears that Champ wants to run, or else bite Dayleen’s horse in the ass, neither of which is making it easy on John Masters, a my travelling companion. A freelance writer, Masters isn’t fond of horses and is an inexperienced rider – a bad combination when climbing ridges with steep fallaways while trying to control a skittish gelding.

We are a few hours into a five-day roadtrip through the Alberta Rockies and, just to make it perfectly clear that we are in cowboy country, our hosts – the folk at Travel Alberta – have made sure our adventure kicks off with a two-hour trail ride. In fact, tomorrow’s schedule features yet another two-hour ride at a locale outside Banff, which would be fine if we were ranch hands or had titanium buttocks, neither of which happens to be the case.

In addition to the Boundary Ranch, Alberta's 4,211-square-km Kananaskis Country features campgrounds, golf and two alpine and X-country ski areas developed for previous winter Olympics.

There was supposed to be other journalists on this trek, but for some unknown reason a tour of Alberta’s Rockies inspired little enthusiasm. In fact, of the 120 international and Canadian travel writers who signed up for this fall’s Go Media Canadian Tourist Commission-sponsored tours, I was the only one who selected “Working the Rockies.” Masters is here by default – he was booted off his first choice, a VIA Rail trip across Canada – because he had done it before. And since there are only two of us, Travel Aberta has opted to dispense with the customary escort, supplying us instead with a road map, directions, booked accomodations, a rental car, unlimited gas and – just so we don’t get too footloose – a 13-page itinerary.

Our car, a Mitsubishi (and I thought the company only made TVs and computers) has a couple of attractive features: good acceleration and a sweet sound system, which means we can better appreciate the CDs I burned for the trip. Of course, Masters, who is no audiophile, would prefer to listen to CBC news. It’s one of his daily rituals, along with reading the Globe and Mail and drinking a double espresso in the late afternoon. Incredibly, he requires no caffeine in the morning.

The toughest part of our trip so far has been getting out of Calgary, a city that doesn’t see any need for coherent signage, and which apparently believes that endless urban sprawl is what God intended. However, once we escaped from Cowtown’s cement runways and headed west into Kananaskis Country, the drive suddenly changed for the better. Set in the foothills and of the Rockies, the province’s 4,211-square-kilometre recreational district boasts numerous provincial parks and some spectacular natural beauty. And though the area is open to tourists year round, fall may be the best time to visit because the highways aren’t clogged with camper trailers.

Before we reached our first stop – Boundary Ranch – I had already made Masters stop a couple of times so I could snap photos of the stunning landscape. Interestingly, we both have the same model of camera, a Panasonic digital, and even odder we both have the same model of backpack, a piece of swag we both scored on a previous media trip. Fortunately, no one is going to take us for twins. We look nothing alike.

Masters (in green shirt) and Dayleen. An hour later, waiting for the circulation in his legs to return: "Ice picks in the knees," Masters groans while hobbling about in the dirt.

I’m not the only person who finds this rugged terrain visually inspiring. Kananaskis Country has served as the setting for many movies, including Russell Crowe’s Mystery, Alaska; Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven; Brad Pitt’s The Assassination Of Jesse James and Heath Ledger’s Brokeback Mountain.

Boundary Ranch www.boundaryranch.com/ has a connection with the movies as well: the owner, Rick Guinn, a former rodeo star, also had a brief acting and modelling career. He starred in Buffalo Rider, a 1978 film that dramatizes the true life of Western legend C.J. “Buffalo” Jones, who worked to prevent the extinction of the American buffalo during the 19th-century. ”Guinn landed the role largely because he was the only actor the producers could find who could actually ride a buffalo.”

_____________________________________

“Guinn landed the role largely because he

was the only actor the producers could find who

could actually ride a buffalo.”

_____________________________________

After finishing our trail ride and waiting for the circulation in Masters’  legs to return – “Ice picks in the knees,” he groans while hobbling about in the dirt – we tour the grounds. Boundary Ranch is a major operation with about 90 horses, so it can accomodate large tour groups. In addition to trail rides, which last anywhere from one hour to six days, the ranch also offers hikes, canoe trips, rodeos, gunfight re-enactments, chuckwagon races and chili cook-offs. The outfit has even partnered with another company to provide a “Surf & Saddle” package to those who want to combine trail rides with whitewater rafting.

Under the savvy tutelage of its buffalo-riding owner, film and rodeo star Rick Guinn, the Boundary Ranch has expanded its amenities since the 1930s to include gunfights, Wild West rodeos, photo safaris, sleigh rides, calf and horse roping, mountain biking and more.

We don’t have time for the Surf & Saddle combo, unfortunately. We have to get to Mt. Engadine Lodge before dark. It’s located about an hour’s drive away along a gravel road called the Smith-Dorrien Trail. And as we accelerate into the afternoon sun I plug in a CD. Elvis Presly’s voice fills the car – “A hunk a hunk of burning love …”

“A little rock n’ roll for the Rockies,” I say, and put on my shades.

Continued…Part II, III

Photos by Kerry Banks

by Jennifer Patterson

The boreal forest stretches out beneath us, broken only by the occasional sinkhole lake, as we leave Fort Simpson and the Mackenzie River behind. The Twin Otter floatplane lifts west, into the sun – still high in the northern sky – and over the Nahanni National Park Reserve, a 4,766-square-kilometre slice of N.W.T. wilderness near the Yukon-B.C. border and the headwaters of the South Nahanni River. Save for the roar of the engine and wind, our group travels in silence. We have waited all day for this flight; some of us have waited our entire lives to raft the South Nahanni – a Canadian Heritage River that moved Pierre Elliot Trudeau to make it a national park reserve in 1976. Two years later, the area became  the first natural region in the world to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We fly over the canyons and karstlands of the Ram Plateau in the Mackenzie Mountains, where every ripple of rock is lit golden in the evening sun. Shafts of sunlight burst through the clouds and we catch our first glimpse of the Nahanni, its Fourth Canyon and – with a collective gasp – Virginia Falls. In The Dangerous River, my grandfather’s 1954 account of his N.W.T. explorations, he  writes about feeling the vibration of the “Falls of the Nahanni” from 20 miles away. One week later, on August 25, 1927, Grandpop snapped the earliest photographs of the then-unnamed falls, accompanied by Minnesota prospector Albert Faille. Now a lifetime, two days and four flights later, my father, brother, sister and I touch down in the heart of the Nahanni wilderness, as our plane scuds to a stop on the wide and silty river near the campsite above Virginia Falls. My heart skips a beat. This is where my family’s love affair with Canada began.

R.M. Patterson, courtesy Albert Faille

It was my brother, Jeremy, who planted the seed of this family expedition – to mark the 80th anniversary of Grandpop’s 1927-to-1929 paddle up the South Nahanni. Soon I was calling my sister, Sam, in Victoria, and urging her to join us. Her only reservation: our easy raft float downriver wouldn’t compare to Grandpop’s adventures navigating rapids in a loaded canoe, surviving sub-zero temperatures and living off the occasional kill of wild game – epic stories he recounted in five books, numerous magazine articles and over Sunday dinners at the Victoria home he shared with our grandmother. Raymond Murray Patterson was one of Canada’s foremost adventure writers. A legendary figure in our family, he also inspired a generation of Canadian adventurers, many of whom to this day attempt to replicate his journeys into the wild. His first book received rave reviews: The New York Herald Tribune described The Dangerous River as “an emotion of the north . . . recorded, it is not too much to say, in a mixture of Thoreau and Jack London.” The New Yorker called it “truly enchanting,” while The New York Times said its modest writing “betrays no indication that Mr. Patterson realizes what a remarkable man he is.”

Day Two: Virginia Falls to Strawberry Island

Nothing beats the Canadian North for bringing diverse groups of people together – my grandfather and Faille 80 years ago and now the Patterson clan: me, the writer, my father, a retired B.C. Supreme Court master, businessman brother Jeremy and architect sister Sam. Then there’s the rest of our 15-member group: Wall Street fund managers Jen and Laura; Corin, an amateur photographer; real estate mogul James and his 14-year-old nephew Jacob; journalist Michael and wife Vivien; guides Rob, Kaj, Jamie and Bhreagh.

Awoken early the next day by the camp bustle, we are anxious to pack up the tents and follow the wooden boardwalk through Jack pines and black spruce to Virginia Falls. The black-and-white photographs I’ve seen in Grandpop’s heavy, leather-bound albums soon come alive in full sound and colour: the Sluice Box Rapids, now a roar of whitewater, and just ahead, Virginia Falls, plunging 92 metres into the river’s Fourth Canyon. And at its base, dwarfed by limestone cliffs: the three sky-blue inflatable rafts that will transport us 200 km downriver over five days. From here, they are the size of jellybeans. My 71-year-old father and I stand for a moment, spellbound. Over the din of the rushing water, I ask how long he has waited for this moment. His eyes are fixed on the river ahead. “Forever,” he responds.

We could spend hours here, but the river waits. We strap bags to backs for the 1.2-km portage to lower ground through rosemary-like Labrador tea, northern starflowers and kinnikinnick. A dirt trail descends in a steep series of switchbacks, where the waters’ gentle mist falls on us like fresh dew. Southerners James and Jacob are already lounging on a log below, dressed in camouflage gear. They will spend the better part of this trip waiting for the rest of us.

courtesy R.M. Patterson

The Nahanni is the stuff of legends – tales of gold and adventure, trappers and prospectors, of the indigenous Nahanni and those European adventurers, my English grandfather included, drawn here in the quest for freedom and fortune. After the Klondike Gold Rush, placer gold was rumoured to have been found up the Flat River, a tributary of the South Nahanni. But men stayed away, fearful of the unforgiving terrain and the numbers of dead or missing that led to tales of “head-hunting Nahanni.” In reality, the string of murders and deaths by starvation, accident or misfortune along the river were more likely the result of gold, greed or poor planning – in the wake of the frenzied and lawless gold rush. Even when Grandpop and Faille set off from Fort Simpson in 1925, their dream of paddling north up the Nahanni was considered pure suicide.

From a rocky launching point on the beach, we don wet-weather gear: sou’westers, Patagonia rain pants, rubber boots and life jackets. Packs loaded and secured in the 18-foot Moravia rafts, we then settle in, five to a craft, a guide at the helm. The dramatic rust-coloured Fourth Canyon is the first of four to come. At their greatest height, these sheer rock faces – which escaped the last ice age – rise steeply to 1,200 metres, then curve into natural amphitheatres of dolomite, limestone and layers of sedimentary rock that rival the Grand Canyon.

In one of the other rafts, Jeremy and Sam swap old jokes, leaving me, the baby of the family, alone with Dad. I feel privileged, keen to experience the river through his eyes as he trades anecdotes about Grandpop and the river with the guides. His face lights up as he sees for the first time the landscape he has until now only heard about. “The cliffs and this marvellous, calm water flowing through here – it’s just extraordinary.” He points to the shore: “That’s the sort of spot where Grandpop would have camped, on that grassy bank, with a place to beach a canoe.” Further downstream is Marengo Creek, which Grandpop named after Napolean’s favourite horse.

But it isn’t long before the clouds roll in. And just a few hours later, at a rocky camp on Strawberry Island, I lie in my tent and listen to the rolling thunder echoing off the canyons and mountains like bursts of gunfire.

Day Three: Strawberry Island to The Gate

A light mist rises off the river as we launch the inflatables and head downstream toward the Figure 8 Rapids, a stretch of whirlpools, boils and eddies that Grandpop and Faille, remarkably, navigated without portaging. High water has since changed these rapids – now categorized as class III-plus in difficulty. But by canoe, says Rob, the Nahanni has always been an incredibly challenging river to run, so “you can imagine what it was like for your grandfather and Faille to canoe upstream. That’s why The Dangerous River is so talked about now, because it would have been tough to paddle up. It’s too deep to pole, and in these canyons there are no beaches for tracking a canoe.”

courtesy R.M. Patterson

Travelling downriver at about 10 klicks, we soon pass the Flat River and the site of Faille’s cabin, where in 1927 Grandpop stopped on his way to the falls. Faille spent decades on the river, prospecting for gold and trapping furs. But large quantities of gold were never found.

We fall into a rhythm: awaken early, breakfast and break camp. The guides buzz about, prepping the rafts for another day on the river and, in a place where time is meaningless and cannot be gauged by the sun’s position in the sky,  preparing meals that provide the day’s structure. Pancakes and sausages one morning, eggs Benedict the next. Lunches are eaten  en route – pita stuffed with tabbouleh or caribou smokies roasted over the fire. Dinners feature smoked arctic char and asparagus soup starters, main courses of pork tenderloin, chicken curry or lamb kebabs on a bed of couscous. Later, we perch on camp stools, sip tea and talk well into the evening as Michael shares stories of life in Africa and the guides tease Jen and Laura about Sex and the City. But always, the focus comes back to the river and Grandpop’s books. Vivien encourages my father to read from The Dangerous River while Michael takes notes. Jamie, the son of bush pilots, who now studies at Oxford, observes, “What’s most compelling about these stories is the legend that was R.M. Patterson himself. He’s a great writer, but he was also out there living life in a really big, amazing way.”

Day Four: The Gate to Headless Creek

Rob and Kaj, courtesy Jennifer Patterson

The rafting life is making some of us restless. Keen to climb mountains in search of Dall’s sheep, eight of us scramble to the top of The Gate, a narrow limestone passage with 460-metre-high walls, for a view of Pulpit Rock and downriver toward Big Bend, a 90-degree hairpin turn in the river. At the summit, Corin snaps photos and a shirtless Jamie salutes the sun in a yoga pose. I study the almost-bonsai twists of stunted trees and tundra plants, brittle reindeer lichen and low-lying shrubs laden with crimson berries, thinking of Grandpop and the “dreamy afternoons” he spent hiking here, where “the river was a distant murmur through the warm scent of pines.”

We soon pass through the foreboding Funeral Range to the Headless Range and Headless Creek, so named for two brothers whose decapitated skeletons were discovered tied to trees here in 1908, or so the legend goes. In 1927, strangers again warned Grandpop against setting out on another expedition: “Men vanish in that country,” one cautioned. “Down the river, they say it’s a damned good country to keep clear of . . . a country lorded over by Wild Mountain Men . . . the river fast and bad.” The MacLeod brothers’ murder was but one of hundreds of dark stories about the Nahanni. From 1908 to 1945, many more men disappeared, starved to death or died here mysteriously.

Fittingly, that evening on a river-rock beach under blue and pink brush strokes of cloud, Dad reads a passage about Willie and Frank MacLeod from The Dangerous River – ghost stories in a haunted valley.

Day Five: Headless Creek to Lafferty Creek

We paddle past Headless Creek and through Deadmen Valley, stopping at Sheaf Creek. We’re looking for the site of the cabin where Grandpop and the English trapper  Gordon Matthews, his companion on his second Nahanni trek, overwintered in 1928-1929. We pull the rafts onto the beach, and while Vivien and Jamie investigate wolf, bear and raptor tracks in the sand, Sam stumbles upon a rusted stovepipe and a conspicuous clearing in the trees. Further upstream is the likely site of the men’s food cache, where foodstuffs and fur pelts were stored on high wooden platforms to deter animals. We examine sunken cabin beams and the remnants of a makeshift stove, fashioned from an old oil drum, with the enthusiasm of amateur archaeologists. Kaj is certain we have found the site, exactly as Grandpop described it, in a clearing in the trees. Dad’s chest puffs with pride as photos are snapped for posterity. Even Rob and the guides make a note of the find for future trips downriver.

We lunch at Dry Canyon Creek, ride the high-standing waves of the Cache Rapids where Matthews almost drowned after falling overboard in 1928 and enter the dramatic First Canyon, its towering limestone walls the highest yet. Later, at our Lafferty Creek camp, Dad reads from Grandpop’s journals, written in the form of a letter home to his mother in England and published posthumously as the Nahanni Journals.

Day Six: Lafferty Creek to The Splits, a.k.a. “Bug Hell Island”

It is the last full day on the river and we slip into swimsuits in preparation for the hot springs ahead. From here on, we’re at the mercy of the infamous mosquitoes of the North; Rob warns us to keep bug shirts at the ready. Soon enough we reach Kraus Hot Springs, greeted by the sulphur stench of rotten eggs. The rocks in the pool overlooking the river are covered in a brown sludge, the water warm and brackish. Kaj slathers his face with mud, a Nahanni tradition, as a light river breeze keeps the bugs at bay.

We camp on what Bhreagh dubs “Bug Hell Island” in The Splits, where the Nahanni widens as it braids and weaves in myriad directions. Bug shirts are the preferred dinner attire, as dragonflies dive-bomb our heads, hunting for insects. We bat the bugs away from one another. But when the hordes reach class-IV-plus we escape to the sanctuary of the tents, diving in and quickly zipping up the fly. But I still count – and kill – more than 60 mosquitoes that have somehow followed us inside.

Day Seven: To Nahanni Butte and Fort Simpson

It is with mixed feelings that we leave the river behind. Jeremy, in particular, is heartbroken that the trip is almost over. And all of us feel humbled by the epic journey made so many years ago by Grandpop, without the security of experienced guides or their gourmet meals. Soon we are returning by plane from Nahanni Butte to Fort Simpson, where roads replace rivers and hot showers, flush toilets and bed linens await. The group scatters, to B&Bs and frontier hotels, with promises to meet up for a last supper at the only restaurant in town. But like Grandpop, after months of sleeping in the open air, I cannot bring myself to stay indoors. Instead I lie in a hammock in the B&B’s garden, reading and rereading passages from his books in an attempt to prolong the euphoria of being on the river. Later, unable to sleep, I lie staring at the ceiling fan, plotting my return – this time for two weeks,
in a canoe.

Getting There Yourself

• THE OPERATOR Nahanni River Adventures/Canadian River Expeditions (1-800-297-6927). Cost: $5,022.20 per person for seven-day expedition.
• GEAR Quick-dry clothes, hiking boots, rain gear, insect repellent. Checklist at nahanni.com.
• TO LEARN MORE The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) works to protect the 40,000-square-kilometre Nahanni watershed from mining and to expand the park’s boundaries.
• CRITICAL READING The Dangerous River: Adventure on the Nahanni by R.M. Patterson (TouchWood Editions, 2009; $19.95); Nahanni Journals: R.M. Patterson’s 1927-1929 Journals/ed. Richard C. Davis (University of Alberta Press, 2008; $29.95).
• ON SCREEN Nahanni (1962), a short National Film Board classic, following Albert Faille upriver to Virginia Falls. nfb.ca/film/Nahanni l

Lead image courtesy Jennifer Patterson

courtesy Lone Primate; flickr.com

“Do you think that mountain is taller than the CN Tower?” We all laugh, thinking that Joe is making a joke. But no, he is quite serious. In fact, he will pose this same question several more times as we drive through the Rockies, becoming increasingly convinced in his own mind that none of the soaring peaks around here are actually taller than Toronto’s phallic landmark.<!– fi

There are five of us in the van: Janice from Tourism BC, Tom, our driver and fixer, and three journalists – myself, André, from Montreal’s La Presse, and Joe, from the Toronto Sun. We are on a trip to southeastern B.C., but we have begun our journey in Calgary and are approaching our destination via Trans-Canada #1. The route winds through Banff National Park, where we make a stop so that Joe can take photos of some mountain goats that are grazing by the roadside.

courtesy kris247; flickr.com

Joe is a strange character; red-haired with a crew cut and freckles, he somehow manages the rare feat of  looking young and old at he same time. He stands on the shoulder of the road in a loud Hawaiian shirt, ill-fitting shorts and scabrous runners, trying to bring the goats into focus as 16-wheelers howl past only paces to his left. “Watch out for the trucks!” yells Tom, leaping out of the van and running over to make certain that we don’t have to witness a horrible accident.

Joe is a throwback, a guy who would be at home in one of those 1930s movies, screaming “Stop the presses!” The only thing that is missing is the cigar. At least that’s what I thought at first. But a half hour into the trip, I am stunned to see him smoking a stogie in the back seat. Thoughtfully, he is holding it out the window. Joe is also an urban creature. He used to write a column entitled “The Night Scrawler” for the Sun and admits that this is the farthest west he has ever travelled in Canada. Not only is B.C. virgin territory to him, this is also his first up-close glimpse of the Rockies. You would think then that he might be awe-struck by the scenery, but he doesn’t seem to be paying much attention. Instead, he has spent most of the drive making and taking repeated calls on his cellphone.

As boisterous as Joe is, André, the Quebecer, is virtually silent. A big, broad-shouldered guy who bears a resemblance to Guy Lafleur, he is originally from Belgium. Although André seems to speak English fine, he claims to be uncomfortable with the language, so he usually only speaks if spoken to. Because he never removes his dark shades it is often difficult to tell if he is even awake.

courtesy Mike.in.NY; flickr.com

We make a brief stop at Lake Louise to admire the scenery. Just as Tom predicts there are Japanese tourists paddling around the lake in red canoes. “A red canoe on a blue-green lake – it’s the Japanese ideal of Canada,” he says. Down at the dock in front of the Chateau Lake Louise there are two newlyweds posing for their own personal photographer. The groom is wearing white pants with a pink tie and a pink vest. His bride, a blonde bombshell with a large tattoo on her shoulder, is clad in a tight, low-cut, wedding dress from which her breasts are threatening to burst out of.

Lake Louise may have more people with cameras per square kilometre than any other location in Canada, and within minutes every male with a lens has found his way to the dock to snap the bride with the jiggling bosom. Every male that is, except for Joe. We find him back at the van jabbering into his cellphone. He didn’t even make it down to the lake. I tell him about the scenic vista that he missed at the dock. He seems to think I’m putting him on.

We are headed for Cathedral Mountain Lodge in Yoho National Park. As we drive west through a gauntlet of glacier-topped peaks, Joe keeps asking Tom to stop the van so he can take photos of road signs. While he is outside lining up a shot, I tell Tom, “This cellphone stuff has to stop. The guy is driving me crazy.”

“Don’t worry,” he replies. “We’ll soon be in a cellphone dead zone.”

Tom is right on the money. After we cross Kicking Horse Pass and enter into B.C., Joe can’t get a signal. When he is informed that we are out of cellphone range and will remain that way for a few days, he has a mild panic attack. “What am I going to do?” he says. “My girlfriend is going to kill me.”

(To be continued …)

The outrageous idea arose from the mind of Geoffrey Pyke, an eccentric British scientist who worked as an advisor to Lord Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations. In 1942, Pyke began wrestling with one of the Allies’ most daunting problems. In the mid-Atlantic, beyond the range of the land-based aircraft, was a stretch of ocean where Allied shipping was being cut to pieces by the merciless German submarine fleet. What was needed, Pyke decided, was a means of providing air cover for the merchant ships. His solution was icebergs that resembled aircraft carriers. The platform would melt eventually, of course, but Pyke believed that a large enough piece of ice would last at least a few months—longer if it were insulated on the outside and cooled from within by a refrigeration system. Better yet, the platform couldn’t be sunk; and even if damaged by torpedoes or bombs, repairs could be made simply by freezing new chunks of ice into place. In battle, the ice ships could put their onboard refrigeration systems to effective use by spraying super-cooled water at enemy ships, icing their hatches shut, clogging their guns and freezing enemy sailors to death.

Winston Churchill was receptive to the idea. After reading the formal War Cabinet report on the Habbakuk project in December 1942, Churchill shot back a memo stamped Most Secret. “I attach the greatest importance to the prompt examination of these ideas,” he wrote. “The advantages of a floating island or islands, even if only used as refuelling depots for aircraft, are so dazzling that they do not need at the moment to be discussed.”

But before the plan could be put into anything even close to reality, Pyke had to solve one fundamental problem: ice melts. Early in 1943, two researchers employed by Pyke discovered that by mixing wood pulp, sawdust, or cotton wool with water and freezing the slurry, they could create a substance that still floated nicely but was much stronger and less brittle than plain ice. It could be shaped with ordinary woodworking tools and it melted much more slowly than ice. The material was dubbed pykrete in honour of Pyke.

Pyke excitedly showed the stuff to Mountbatten, who was so similarly afflicted that he rushed into Winston Churchill’s bathroom and in a scene that sound like something out of Monty Python, dropped a block of the stuff in the PM’s bath water. Churchill’s bath may have been ruined, but he gave Mountbatten the go-ahead. Pyke was ordered to produce pykrete in large quantities to test and perfect it. Utmost secrecy was required, so he set up shop in a refrigerated meat locker in a Smithfield Market butcher’s basement; his “shop assistants” were disguised British commandos. The work was carried on behind a protective screen of massive frozen animal carcasses.

The butcher’s backroom soon produced enough samples for Mountbatten and Churchill to take their pykrete show on the road. Mountbatten unveiled the invention at a tense secret meeting of the Allied chiefs of staff at Quebec City’s Chateau Frontenac Hotel in August 1943. Mountbatten entered the project meeting with two blocks and placed them on the ground. One was a normal ice block and the other was pykrete. He then drew his service pistol and shot at the first block. It shattered and splintered. Next, he fired at the Pykrete. The bullet ricocheted off the block, grazing the trouser leg of U.S. Admiral Ernest King and ended up in the wall. Mountbatten’s unorthodox demonstration had the desired effect.

In the winter of 1943, Allied scientists began constructing a 1,000-ton, 18-metre-long, nine-metre-wide prototype on Patricia Lake to gather information about how it could be insulated and cooled. The ice ship was disguised with a tin roof to make it look like a boathouse. Although the vessel would move slowly, and the enemy could hardly fail to see it coming, this hardly mattered. “Surprise,” Pyke theorized, “can be obtained from permanence as well as suddenness.” The experimental craft proved seaworthy and its immense hull was as strong as Pyke had predicted, but Mountbatten eschewed the scientist’s reports for a more direct testing method: hauling out a shotgun and vainly trying to blow a hole in the side of their precious prototype.

The engineers managed to keep the model frozen during the entire summer of 1943. Unfortunately, the astronomical cost of deploying a full-size ship quickly became apparent. In the end, the HMS Habbakuk was never built. Land-based aircraft were attaining longer ranges, U-boats were being hunted down faster than they could be built, and the U.S. was gaining numerous island footholds in the Pacific–all of which contributed to a reduced need for a vast, floating airfield. The prototype was abandoned and when the ice ship finally thawed, its skeleton of wooden forms and refrigeration equipment sank to the bottom.

In the 1970s, the remains of the Habbakuk were found by divers and studied by University of Calgary underwater archaeologists. Later, in 1989, a plaque to commemorate the strange ship was erected on Patricia Lake’s southern shore. However, the plaque offers no clue to the fate of Geoffrey Pyke. After the war, eager to convey his unconventional ideas, he wrote and broadcast. He campaigned against the death penalty and for government support of UNICEF. But the more he thought about trying to achieve a better world, the more pessimistic he became–it seemed that human nature was antithetical to innovation in general and his ideas in particular. He was widely mocked in the media of the time, and a sense of gloom overtook him. On February 21, 1948, Pyke committed suicide by consuming sleeping pills.

Photo Credits:

 #1, 2: darkroastedblend.com

#3: cabinetmagazine.org

#4: discoveralberta.com

1. Niagara Falls, Ontario: 12 to 14 million. Admittedly the numbers are boosted by the natural wonder’s close proximity to the U.S. The Americans have their own falls on the other side of the border, but that section is puny compared to Canada’s crescent-shaped Horseshoe Falls, which is 53 metres high and 792 metres wide. This is where the serious thunder happens, and where the daredevils go over in barrels. Interestingly the first person to take the tumble was a woman: Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old Michigan school teacher. Her death-defying plunge, on October 24, 1901, was a publicity stunt. Edson survived, bleeding, but amazingly unharmed. Soon after exiting the barrel, she said, “No one should ever try that again.” Unfortunately, the fortune she hoped to make from a lecture tour was never realized, as her manager was a con-man who took everything she owned. Since Taylor’s historic ride, 14 other people have intentionally gone over the Falls in, or on a device, despite her advice. Some have survived unharmed, but others have drowned or been severely injured.

2. Harbourfront Centre, Toronto: 12 million visitors. This 10-acre site on the city’s waterfront includes shops, restaurants, green space, art performance venues, an ice skating rink, a marina and an extensive boardwalk. For my money, the best part of the Toronto harbourfront is the ferry that takes you to Centre Island and away from the city.

3. Granville Island, Vancouver: 12 million. Granville Island’s unique design has become a model for other cities. Arranged around an industrial theme this cozy urban enclave of theatres, restaurants, shops and artists’ studios, shares pace with a renowned public market. According to the people who keep track of these things, 71 percent of the annual visitors to Granville Island hail from outside B.C.

4. Stanley Park, Vancouver: 8 million. Officially established in 1888 and measuring 405 hectares, it is the largest city-operated park in Canada and the third largest in North America. In fact, it is more than 10 per cent larger than New York City’s Central Park. Stanley Park has an estimated half million trees, some that reach as tall as 76 metres and many of which are hundreds of years old. There are approximately 200 kilometres of trails and roads in the park, including a picturesque park-circling seawall.

5. Le Vieux Port de Montreal (Old Port), Montreal: 7 million. Like Toronto and Vancouver, Montreal’s major tourist draw is a waterfront complex that combines, shopping with cultural attractions and green space. The 10-acre landscaped area on the St. Lawrence River features a huge open-air skating rink, IMAX cinema, a marketplace, a science and technology centre, museums, churches, a botanical garden and a biosphere.

6. Exhibition Place, Toronto: 5 million. Exhibition Place features 192 acres of parkland and is the centre of festivals, trade shows and other events in Toronto. The site holds a number of permanent tenants and is home to many annual fairs and shows. The largest of these is the annual Canadian national Exhibition or “EX,” an 18-day fair that takes place at the end of summer. Although no one keeps the numbers, I’d venture this is the Canadian tourist attraction where the most people have thrown up.

7. The Forks, Winnipeg: 4.5 million. This nine-acre landscaped site in the heart of downtown Winnipeg is situated at the historic juncture of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. There are plazas, gardens, and shops and restaurants made from converted railway stalls, plus a riverside promenade.

8. Banff National Park, Alberta: 3.3 million. Climbing, skiing, hiking, horseback riding, bicycling, golfing–there’s a lot to do in Banff National Park, and all of it with an awe-inspiring backdrop. The park also has abundant wildlife with 280 species of birds and 56 species of mammal. The first day I camped in the park a big black bear walked through the campsite swatting ice coolers. We jumped in the car and rolled up the windows, but a couple of cocky Americans threw rocks at him and shouted insults. Luckily for them, the bear ambled off.

9. Canada’s Wonderland, Vaughan, Ontario: 3.25 million. Our country’s most popular theme park boasts 200 attractions and 65 thrilling rides, a 20-acre water park, live entertainment and North America’s greatest variety of roller coasters. The park recently added its 15th coaster, Behemoth, which it claims is Canada’s biggest, tallest and fastest. Behemoth is more than 5,300 feet long and climbs 230 feet with a 75 degree drop and reaches screaming speeds of 125 kph in 3.9 seconds.
  
10. Le Vieux-Quebec (Old City), Quebec City: 3.02 million. Quebec’s Old Town is the only North American fortified city north of Mexico whose walls still exist. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, as the “Historic District of Old Quebec.” Founded in the early 17th century by French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the city celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2008, and its history shows. In Quebec’s Upper and Lower Towns, above and below the cliff, you can find at least 11 architectural styles, ranging from Classical Revival to International Style. The area is also home to the Plains of Abraham, where a pivotal battle between the French and English in 1759 shaped the future of North America.

Photo Credits:

#1: ioniclodge31.ca

#2: flickr.com

#3: familyvacations.com

#4: nature.desktopnexus.com

#5: vacationrentals.vrcd.com