2017 04 Aug Sept

From top left, view of
Banff seen from the Banff
Gondola; the bagpiper
who plays guests onto
the Rocky Mountaineer
Opposite, top row, sign
commemorating Banff
National Park’s UNESCO
World Heritage Site
status; Park Canada’s
red chairs with views
over Banff National Park;
cuisine served at the
Eden Restaurant within
the Rimrock Resort Hotel
middle row, the former
Canadian Bank of
Commerce in Kamloops
now hosts the Brownstone
Restaurant; memorial to
Kamloops’ first European
settlers, who arrived via
an overland route bottom
row, Turkey burger served
in the Fairmont Chateau
Lake Louise; a cocktail to
commemorate the 150th
anniversary of Canandian
Confederation at
the Fairmont Hotel
Vancouver’s Nothh 8
bar; seafood served
at Granville Island in
Vancouver
The Rocky Mountaineer is a luxury rail service
running on four routes in western Canada.
Journeying on the train is a comfortable way
of seeing the region’s landscapes and wildlife.
This year, with Canadians celebrating 150 years since
Confederation — the act that united Britain’s North
American colonies and is regarded by residents as the
birth of their nation — rail travel seems a particularly
fitting as a way of exploring this vast and scenic
country.
Some people speculate as to whether British
Columbia would today even be a part of Canada if
it wasn’t for the Canadian Pacific Railway. It could
well have joined the United States of America, rather
than the Dominion of Canada, if politicians in the
eastern Provinces hadn’t agreed to the enormous
undertaking of financing its construction. In the
late-19th century, an age when powered air travel
was still a distant dream, the railway represented the
only feasible method of rapidly transporting people
and goods across the continent. Even today it takes
four-and-a-half hours to fly the 3,350 kilometres that
separate Vancouver and Toronto. Rail aficionados
may prefer to cover the ground between the two cities
with a journey aboard The Canadian, the train that
takes just shy of three-and-a-half days to cover that
distance.
The Rocky Mountaineer began operating in 1990
and now carries well over 100,000 passengers a year.
It has become recognised as one of the world’s great
train journeys and is an aspirational travel experience.
The First Passage to the West skirts a scenic,
600-kilometre route between Vancouver and Banff
over two days. It passes numerous points noteworthy
for rail enthusiasts, including the Cisco Crossing,
where both the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian
National Railway lines cross the fast-flowing Fraser
River. Arguably the most significant is Craigellachie,
in British Columbia, the place where the final metal
spike was ceremonially hammered into the track to
complete the construction of the Canadian Pacific
Railway on 7 November 1885. Travellers on the train
are unable to disembark to visit the Last Spike Gift
Shoppe and memorial cairn, but they can snap photos
of visitors waving at the train, whose distinctive gold
and blue livery makes it popular with photographers
as it rolls through the countryside.
Guests travelling from west to east are invited
to board the train at a dedicated terminal on the
edge of Vancouver. A smartly turned out gentleman
in Scottish national dress, complete with kilt and
sporran, plays the bagpipes, piping passengers
aboard. As the train accelerates away from the station
non-travelling members of the Rocky Mountaineer’s
staff form a guard of honour to wave off guests — a
scene that prompts many onboard to reach for their
cameras and click the first of many photos during the
journey.
Travellers can choose between two levels of
onboard service — SilverLeaf and GoldLeaf.
Selecting SilverLeaf means travelling in a singlelevel
carriage and being served food at the seat
allocated for the journey. GoldLeaf carriages, by
comparison, have two floors. Meals are served in the
dining carriage on the lower level. Reclining leather
seats are ranged beneath dome-windows on the upper
level, offering elevated, panoramic views over the
landscape through which the train traverses. Those
windows, incidentally, are cleaned prior to each day’s
travel, to minimise the chance of flecks impinging
views or being recorded in photographs.
An enhanced Deluxe GoldLeaf service guarantees
the most luxurious guestrooms in hotels. That means
staying in an executive suite at the Fairmont Olympic
hotel in Seattle, while travelling on the Coastal
Passage route, and overnighting in either the five-star
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