Canada goose (Branta canadensis) Photo By Fabian Roudra Baroi – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135763237

Dear Readers, yesterday we sprang up at stupid o’clock and flew from Toronto to Montreal to see one of my husband’s aunties. G is in her nineties and living in a rather nice nursing home, where she is one of the only residents on her floor who doesn’t have dementia. Not much is written about how people cope when it’s so difficult to have a meaningful conversation with anyone other than the harried staff, who are always rushing off to take someone to the toilet or pick up someone who’s about to fall over.  Fortunately she is still a reader, and a watcher of documentaries, and she was fascinated with the recent eclipse, although she turned down the chance to go up to the roof and get battered about by the high winds. Very sensible too. G is very stoical, but I wish that she had a bit more human contact. So many of her friends are now dead, or have health challenges of their own.

We flew into Montreal, but we always get the train back – it’s a long trip, but if you go business class you get a rather nice meal, wine and even some Baileys, so it more or less pays for itself. But how come I’d never noticed this very fine mural at the station? They’re a bas relief that reflects Canadian life in the 1920s and 1930s, although they were actually created by artist Charles Fraser Comfort in 1943. Comfort also designed the murals at the Toronto Stock Exchange, so I must have a quick look at them if they’re still around.

The words on the mural (which include excerpts from the National Anthem ‘O Canada’) are in English on one side, and French on the other.

Photo by Sandra Cohen-Rose and Charles Rose https://www.flickr.com/photos/73416633@N00/

I loved these hyperactive giant plaster people, though that golf player looks as if he might take your head off, and I am finding some of the activities a little puzzling. Still, they cheered me up no end. And there’s something about a long train journey that lifts my spirits in a way that hopping onto an aeroplane never does. It’s the slight anxiety before you board, the digging out of books and the Kindle, the sight of that huge, noisy engine.

The Montreal/Toronto locomotive!!

Off we go. Looking out of the window I see huge flocks of Canada geese foraging amongst the stubble. How different they look here, in their native country! It’s hard to think of these belligerent birds as shy and retiring, but away from the parks and cities they’re nervous souls, as well they might be, with one subspecies (the Giant Canada Goose) having been hunted almost to extinction during the last century. In the UK, of course, they’re everywhere, having been first introduced in the late 17th century as part of King James II’s waterfowl collection in St James’s Park in London. I sometimes wonder why, of all the attractive goose species in the world this one was chosen, but then it is a striking (though not colourful) bird. It’s also the first animal I was ever bitten by, having offered one a biscuit as a toddler, only to be nipped and then knocked over in a flurry of wings. I forgive them even so.

Canada geese in flight (Photo By Ken Billington – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12306315)

And then there was this lot, again pecking over the stubble and looking very wary. This isn’t my photo, but you get the general idea. Again they were wary birds, looking around and scuttling away when the train blew its whistle, which it does almost continuously from Dorval to Brockville. There are a lot of level crossings with no barriers, and believe me you wouldn’t want to get into the path of one of these trains.

Eastern Wild Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) Photo by Tim Ross (Public Domain)

There were also a few turkey vultures riding the late afternoon thermals. What impressive birds they are! Jet black with a wrinkly red head, turkey vultures find most of their carrion by smell, and have been used as an indicator for pipeline gas leaks.

Turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) Photo byBy Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47807279

And then the light diminished and on we went. I’ve been reading a frankly horrifying book called ‘Cloistered’ by Catherine Coldstream, which documents her time as a Carmelite Nun in the north east of England. Put a group of people together, deprive them of outside oversight and watch as a petty dictatorship grows to the point where the whole organisation falls apart. Interesting and heartfelt, if a bit unfocused at times.

And then we’re heading on the last leg towards Toronto. Somebody’s adorable baby girl started to wail, and no amount of pacing up and down the carriage seemed to help. The seats seemed to get increasingly uncomfortable. And when finally we got to Toronto Union Station, we all pile off and go our separate ways. It’s funny how sometimes strangers ‘gel’ on a train trip and get talking, and how other times everyone just stays in their own world, and it’s fine either way. But I’m tired, and ready to go home after my marathon day. I’m just glad to have had a chance to do a bit of train-bird watching.