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Opinion: Overland to North Bay and New Liskeard by train and bicycle

'Now, in 2021, it’s my hope to ride the train again with my granddaughters'
rail tracks generic 1 turl 2016
File photo by Jeff Turl.

I write—from my home in California—in support of the restoration of the great Northlander train service between Cochrane and Toronto. 

I rode the Northlander several times and wrote about the experience in an essay first published in the 1990s, reprinted since then.  I traveled extensively in northeastern Ontario in the 1980s and 1990s and the Northlander was there when I needed it.  It seems to me that others needed the train too—when I boarded the train in Huntsville and North Bay I boarded with a crowd. 

Now, in 2021, it’s my hope to ride the train again with my granddaughters. Below is an excerpt from my essay; it concerns my first trip to North Bay.

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I’d started in front of my house in Ithaca, N.Y., milepost 0, intending to bicycle to North Bay and then go even further north, on into the Arctic Watershed—I’d intended to traverse some regions, to cross the Canadian Shield to where the rivers flow north into Hudson’s Bay.  And, once up there, I’d catch the train—the storied Northlander—home from one of the far towns...  It was 1988 and I was not yet 40.

North Bay?  We’re a West Indian family (though I was born in the States) and back at the start of the twentieth century my grandfather’s mysterious brother Charles had left the family home in Buff Bay, Jamaica, and moved to North Bay, where he lived and worked for decades.  There’d been trouble between the brothers—my grandfather never spoke about what the issue had been, only that Charles’ successful effort to put thousands of miles between them was a symbol of it. 

All my life I’ve felt the pull of the north and North Bay was family so off I went on my bicycle to see the location and after some adventures, I rolled into North Bay, where children directed me to the train station where the baggage wrangler, a smart and gracious woman named Bonnie, supplied me with the Northlander’s schedule and patiently and companionably answered all my questions about the town. 

The children I’d met on the street knew where everything in North Bay was located and they told me which intersections were dangerous and described landmarks so I’d not get lost. In fact, everyone I met in town was knowledgeable and friendly and I left North Bay two days later in that good feeling and headed further and further north, sharing the roads with lumber trucks, cruising (through rain) along the Ottawa River, crossing into Quebec—at a strange town with Italian antique fountains at every intersection—and drifting up alongside the east shore of Lake Timiskaming. 

To be moving through bear, wolf, and moose country—though I saw none of those animals—was what I’d come for.  I’d wanted to be moving and, at the same time, up close against the big wild space stretching away from the edge of my body. 

But early the second day out of North Bay it began raining again and I realized I wasn’t going to make it into the Watershed—I was missing my wife and young daughter and I was tired, so I cut west and came to New Liskeard a bit before sunset. 

The Ontario Northland schedule told me that the southbound train came through New Liskeard at midnight and New Liskeard, I discovered, is a lovely town, built on terraces up from Lake Timiskaming.  I’d catch the train to Toronto and then take Greyhound back to Ithaca from there. 

Coming into New Liskeard, cruising through downtown, I was glad to pass a movie theatre showing a Monty Python film I’d not seen (and a row of restaurants).  I found the train station and left my panniers there and came back to the theatre for my night out: it was strange to be suddenly sitting in a movie eating popcorn and drinking a Coke alone among strangers laughing together with them at the screen.  And it was strange being entertained in public at an entertainment palace after nights of camping, strange to pay to be distracted, the distraction oddly more pleasant for my seeing it for what it was.

After the movie I had a very good dinner at a Chinese restaurant, then wandered back to the station. 

New Liskeard felt really comfortable to be in that evening and details and vistas of the town have stayed with me in the years since.  The theatre manager had greeted me warmly and offered to keep my bike in the lobby while I watched the movie.  70 or 80 miles I guess short of the Arctic Watershed. 

But here I was as far as New Liskeard instead, having had a fine dinner, having enjoyed myself at a movie, having cycled 70, 80, and 90 miles a day for day after day, and now in the Ontario Northland station waiting for the southbound and feeling OK.  A long freight train came by—incredibly bright constellation of three headlights on the first engine, two of which were down low at either end of the base of the triangle, the better to see you with—picking up speed and the station master and I were standing there in the wind it made on the platform watching it, car after car after car until the shapes blurred: I don’t know what was in his mind but I was thinking of living a long life of this.

The Northlander arrived a few minutes later. 

The station master wished me well and lifted my bike onto the baggage car as I climbed into a coach.  We headed south and, as the track curved, I stayed awake and watched the locomotive’s headlight illuminate the trees as we snaked toward Toronto.  Who could not love train travel?    

C. S. Giscombe,

California