The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
The Ontario Northland is going mighty fast for a funeral barge, 65 mph past ribbons of sumacs that are coming on vermillion, that eye-blasting, keening, it’s-almost-Thanksgiving Ontario scenery.
Conductor Brian Irwin isn’t studying the sumacs. No.
The railroad lifer is in thought, formulating a message that will sum up his views of the decision by the McGuinty government to divest itself of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, including the shutting down of the Northlander, erasing, oh, 110 years of history as of Friday. Poof. So there’s Irwin, swaying to the thrumble of the train, and here’s his thought: “We’re kinda partial to a fence at the French River there.”
You see where he’s going. Us versus them. When you’re taking one of your last runs, might as well unload on the sorry South-North relationship in this province. The betrayal. Words do not suffice.
“It is personal — this whole thing is personal,” he says. “We’ve never had a friend at the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines. Why there is such a hate on for the ONR is beyond me. Why the hell are we under Northern Development and Mines anyway? We’re a transportation company!”
We’re on the Tuesday run, charging north to Cochrane, past the postcard prettiness of the train stations at Temagami and Cobalt, recalling the boom days of silver mining and the too-often-forgotten truth that the resources of the north built the paper corridor we know as Bay Street.
Says Irwin plainly: “They want this train off and they don’t give a s—t.”
Lots of people do. Give a s—, that is. Frank Sprenger is one, and it takes a moment to register the fact that having heard the news of the Northlander’s planned demise, Sprenger travelled from his home town of Kerken, Germany, to ride this rail.
Sprenger had been sitting by himself in the café car until a chatty group descended, colonizing as train travellers do, instant camaraderie, ordering up every can of Budweiser in the place until the Bud ran dry and the clatter of red and white cans was swept from the table causing Sprenger to remark, smiling his small smile, that he would love to buy everyone a “real” beer, meaning a German beer. There is no real beer. But there is a stock of Canadian. Excellent!
Leaning into the window of what we will now call the bar car, Sprenger unloads his encyclopedic knowledge of trains, his admiration for the scenery in the Mississippi Delta, his remembrances of a Kodachromatic early morning trip westbound out of Denver or his third-class trans-Siberian adventure aboard BAM, the Russian Baikal-Amur Mainline. You can see a great deal from a train. He wonders: how do you pronounce Kapuskasing?
“I try to finish as many of the railway lines that are possible,” Sprenger says, meaning that when a line is being shut, he gets on it. Don Kennedy sidles up for a chat, sliding across the Naugahyde banquette, and the talk turns political, to the agreed view that for passenger rail to work, governments must subsidize. “It’s an attitude,” Sprenger says. “In North America, the attitude is, trains don’t count.” In most Western European countries, by contrast, “They’re trying to get people off the roads.”
Don Kennedy, with his sterling silver lariat and cowboy boots and that steer’s head for a belt buckle — Kennedy runs about 100 head of beef cattle on Arran Lake — fills Sprenger in on the future, meaning what the government calls “enhanced” bus service. “But the thing is, I simply wouldn’t come,” says the train buff, sounding almost hurt by the suggestion that he would consider taking a bus, for God’s sake.
No one on the train likes the word “buff.” Nor does Sprenger see himself as a “track basher,” apparently a British term for notching up rail routes. A passenger can learn a lot on a train. A “pendrol” is a curvaceous clip that serves the same purpose as a rail spike. If you want to get rid of ground hogs, try bubble gum. Makes their stomachs blow up. Kennedy says only Dubble Bubble works. Hudson Bay: fresh water or salt? Is it true that different rail gauges slowed Hitler’s march into Russia?
For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1264235–ontario-s-northlander-train-makes-its-final-run