Canada’s Little Whistle Stoppers : Two remote rail rides through small towns and grand wilderness

The Little Bear train is already three hours late by the time we pull out of Ontario Northland station in Cochrane, a small town roughly 300 miles north of Toronto. But nobody really minds.

My traveling companions are teachers, students and families on their way home after summer vacation in southern Ontario, and there is a homey atmosphere on board with much hugging and excited chatter over endless cups of coffee.

It’s not surprising that I’m here. Over the past 30 years I have crisscrossed the Australian outback, the jungles of Malaysia and Brazil, the canyon country of Mexico and the tundra of Alaska by rail. But rarely have I used trains to explore my Canadian homeland. There is some irony to this, since Canada’s history was written with every spike driven into the steel lifeline that snakes across this huge, remote country.

Finally, during the summer and fall of 1995, I answered the conductor’s call by sampling two remote Canadian rail trips--the Little Bear, running from Cochrane to the subarctic town of Moosonee in the eastern province of Ontario, and on the other side of the country, Via Rail’s Skeena train from Jasper to the Pacific Coast at Prince Rupert.

Though the northern railroads of Canada cannot boast the grand style of first-class European train travel, they offer friendly, informal journeys filled with the scenic grandeur of untouched wilderness and the opportunity to meet local people.

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Actually, two Polar Bear trains ply the 185 miles of rail north to the twin towns of Moosonee and Moose Factory on James Bay: the summer-only Polar Bear express, a nonstop excursion train that caters to tourists, and the Little Bear, a year-round local whistle-stopper that is the lifeline between remote communities along the tracks.

The Little Bear is one of the last multipurpose trains left in North America, and today, as usual, it is carrying not only passengers but everything from diesel fuel to frozen French fries.

The subarctic forest of tamarack, poplar and black spruce grows more scraggly and more stunted as we head northeast alongside the Abitibi and Moose rivers toward James Bay.

A pack of rambunctious children play tag up and down the aisles of the dining car while Arnold Cheechoo, a cameraman for a local Native-American television station, teaches me the basics of the Cree language. A jovial Marjorie Lloyd Miller climbs aboard at her one-house town of Coral Rapids, favorite chipped coffee mug in hand, en route to this evening’s Lion’s bingo game in Moosonee. Farther on, Alfred Iahtail emerges from the bush and flags us down near Ranoke. The blue-uniformed conductor helps toss Iahtail’s deer carcass and sack of freshly caught pickerel into the boxcar. The hunter, scruffy from a week in the wilderness, smiles broadly and waves at the other passengers: “How’s things today on board the Polar Bear taxi?”

During the last few miles into Moosonee, noses are eagerly pressed against windows for the first glimpse of the town’s tall cathedral steeple, which is greeted with a rousing cheer when it finally appears. The no-frills frontier town of Moosonee sprang to life in 1932 with the coming of the railroad. There are no sidewalks, movie theaters, video parlors or pubs. There aren’t even any polar bears since the nearest big whites roam 100 miles to the north. This I learn from a taxi driver while we are clattering down the corrugated dusty road to the Polar Bear Lodge.

The driver looks barely 15, and I later learn that since Moosonee’s roads are not connected to the rest of Ontario province, driver’s license and insurance are optional. Life at the gateway to the arctic is different from the rest of the country in many ways: Bilingual up here means English and Cree, rather than French, and firearm safety and wilderness survival are compulsory high school courses.

I reserve a table at the town’s only restaurant, but needn’t have bothered. No sooner do I join the local ritual of watching the sunset from the banks of the Moose River than John Romanov invites me to one of the dinner parties that are the hub of Moosonee’s social life.

My first stop early the next morning is Christ the King Cathedral, center of a 5,000-square-mile Catholic diocese, the biggest in Canada. Outspoken Bishop Jules Leguerrier--affectionately nicknamed “the Warrior” by his parishioners--conducts services in English, French and Cree wearing a bead-embroidered moose-hide miter, stole and cloak. His wooden staff is an exquisitely carved flock of geese rising from bulrushes, a gift from a local Native American. With wooden pins removed, it separates into three pieces, “To signify the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” Pastor Normand Brule tells me, adding with a grin, “and to fit better into a suitcase when the bishop is traveling.”

At the town pier I step aboard one of an armada of 24-foot-long motorized canoes that carry passengers 1 1/2 miles to Moose Factory, which is set on an island in the river. Established as the Hudson Bay Company’s second post in Canada in 1673, it is one of Canada’s oldest English settlements. The population of 1,300 is about 95% Cree, who live mostly by hunting and trapping.

Just as there are no white bruins to be seen from the carriages of the Polar Bear, they don’t really process moose in Moose Factory. The name is an old Hudson’s Bay Company term for the post’s manager, who was called a factor, his residence a factory. Some of Moose Factory’s old buildings and the original Hudson Bay Company cemetery survive.

On a walk down riverfront First Street, the tepees I see in front yards serve as smokehouses for fish and meat.

Services are still held at Moose Factory’s St. Thomas Anglican Church, the oldest wooden church in Canada. Browsing through Cree hymn books, I notice holes in the floor. When the church was completed in 1864 spring floods lifted the structure right off its foundations and swept it downstream. After it was rescued and towed back by canoes, holes were drilled in the floor and hammered tight with plugs that were removed each spring to allow flood waters to rise inside and prevent the old church from wandering away again.

John Romanov mans the Polar Princess, a small cruise boat that takes a few dozen passengers the six miles downstream to view the ever-widening Moose River drain into James Bay. “When I see those first geese,” says Romanov, handing me a pair of binoculars, “I get all excited, knowing what’s coming.

Though it is still August, the first frost crunches underfoot as I reluctantly head for the station and board the southbound Polar Bear Express.

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At the other end of the country, in another wilderness area, on Canada’s west coast, twilight silhouettes some of the tallest peaks in the Rocky Mountains as Via Rail’s Skeena train glides out of Jasper, Alberta. In darkness we cross Yellowhead Pass into British Columbia on our 20-hour journey to the Pacific Coast at Prince Rupert, the westernmost leg of this line. Just as the sun begins to rise the following morning, at Mile 93.3, I spot from the window of my sleeper compartment the plaque commemorating the driving of the last spike on April 7, 1914.

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It dawns a typical northern British Columbia day: fat raindrops ruffling the steely gray mirror of Burns Lake, where a solitary loon bobs among the reeds. Midmorning, after 12 hours aboard, I disembark at the tidy Bavarian-themed town of Smithers. I set out by rental car to fulfill a lifelong dream of seeing West Coast Indian totem poles in their magnificent natural setting. Within a 40-mile radius of Smithers, in tiny Native American settlements with names such as Kispiox, Kitwanga and Kitwancool, is Canada’s greatest concentration of standing totem poles. And despite the wear and tear of a harsh climate, some date back as far as the last century.

A half-hour drive west at Moricetown Canyon, where the glacier-green waters of the Bulkley River plunge through a narrow gorge, Verne Mitchell and his uncle haul in 15- to 25-pound coho salmon.

Logging trucks loaded with fresh-cut spruce roar past on the way to the small Native American community of Kitwancool. With a backdrop of mist shrouded hills, I stand alone beneath the steady gaze of ravens, bears and eagles peering down from dozens of 60-foot-high totems towering over a graveyard bearing the ruins of traditional spirit houses that once held the favorite possessions of the deceased.

After a day prowling the back roads around Smithers, I head for ‘Ksan Village to see how the Gitsksan people are keeping alive the rich culture of the northwest coast Indians. In a carving shed amid the pungent litter of red cedar chips, a young carver coaxes fresh new faces from Indian mythology from an arrow-straight log.

“Come on up,” waves engineer Jim Gorden the next afternoon and I clamber into the cab of the 3,300 horsepower diesel electric engine, back on my rail journey. “Welcome aboard the Rupert Rocket,” he quips as we rumble down the tracks at 45 miles per hour on the most scenic stretch of the journey, following the mighty Skeena River for seven hours to the port of Prince Rupert.

“In summer, part of our job is to radio in forest fires. In winter this train is essential for locals because the road is often impassable. We get so much snow,” says the 30-year railway veteran, “that moose take refuge from deep drifts by walking along the rail line. Every year we can’t avoid hitting 100 to 150 of them, far more than hunters take around here.”

A couple of hours brings us to Cedarvale: a rustic general store and post office. Spry 83-year-old Edith Essex hands a homemade apple pie up through the train window, a treat she has frequently prepared for the rail crew during her seven decades as Cedarvale’s postmistress.

“The name is Blond, James Blond,” the steward introduces himself, bowing as I enter the dining lounge, its walls decorated with whimsical children’s crayon drawings of trains. He and a waitress who calls herself “Miss Kitty” Dunn joke with passengers who range from locals off on a shopping spree to Prince Rupert to tourists from South Africa and a group of Americans who while away the entire trip playing bridge in the club car.

I dine with fellow passenger Mia Mather, a train buff from New York. “By the time I arrive back in Toronto on the ‘Canadian’ I’ll have ridden every passenger train in the country,” she says, adjusting the scanner on which she listens in on rail communications.

Leaving the town of Terrace, we follow the north shore of the Skeena, which is now taking on the characteristics of its Native American name, ‘Ksan--River of the Mist. Reminiscent of Norway’s dramatic fiords, these cliffs soar 1,500 feet, flecked in waterfalls fed by the downpours that give Prince Rupert the dubious honor of having more rain and fewer days of sunshine than any other city in Canada.

Crowded with spruce and Douglas fir, chubby islands speckle the wide waterway, hunting grounds for seals and sea lions. The sight of three old wooden fish canneries built on stilts over the water to process salmon signal that we are about to pull into the terminal in Prince Rupert, just 40 miles south of the Alaska border. Passengers excitedly go over plans for the next leg of their trips--cruising the Inside Passage northward or sailing across to the Queen Charlotte Islands for more of the rugged and wild side of British Columbia.

And I again regret that it’s time to leave.

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GUIDEBOOK: Rail Riding Through Canada

Getting to the Polar Bear: There’s nonstop service LAX-Toronto on Air Canada and United; connecting service on USAir, American, Continental, Northwest, TWA, Delta and Canadian International; round-trip fares begin at about $440 including tax.

Cochrane can be reached by flying from Toronto to Timmons ($162 round-trip with tax on Air Canada) and connecting with a bus timed to arrive in Cochrane for the morning departure of the Polar Bear Express.

The train: Ontario Northland Rail Services runs two trains from Cochrane to Moosonee. The summer-only, nonstop Polar Bear Express, and the year-round Little Bear (many stops). Summer prices, $40 round trip on both trains; winter rates $65.

For Northlander and Polar Bear reservations: Ontario Northland, Box 1926, Cochrane, Ontario, POL 1 C0; tel. (800) 268-9281.

Getting to the Skeena: Closest connections are to fly LAX-Edmonton, connecting service only on Delta, Canadian International, Air Canada and Alaska; round-trip fares begin at about $430 including tax. Rent a car and drive from Edmonton to Jasper.

The train: VIA Rail has recently changed the Skeena schedule to make it a daylight trip, better for viewing the spectacular scenery. Economy fare from Prince Rupert to Jasper: $58, hotel accommodations not included. Touring Class: includes all meals, dome car: about $185, hotel accommodations not included.

For Skeena train reservations: tel. (800) 561-3949, or book through a travel agent.

For more information: Canadian Consulate, 550 S. Hope St., Ninth floor, Los Angeles 90071; (213) 346-2700, fax (213) 620-8827.

--M.P.