Architecture of Old Strathcona, Edmonton, Canada

When Narrelle Harris and I visited Edmonton, Canada, in 2013, we decided to stay in the neighbourhood of Old Strathcona, in the city's south.

Strathcona was originally a separate city, established on a different railway from the one which ran to Edmonton. Eventually Edmonton absorbed its rival, and Strathcona declined into a dodgy place that was literally the wrong side of the tracks.

However, in recent years Strathcona has had a revival, becoming a lively nightlife and theatrical centre. This renaissance has been greatly assisted by its wealth of old buildings.

Thus the old fire station...

... stands near a cluster of theatre buildings which are the hub of the annual Fringe Festival:

There's a certain amount of street art scattered about Strathcona's alleyways...

... but personally, I was more taken with the commercial buildings along the main drag, Whyte Avenue.

There's something very boxy and utilitarian about the North American commercial buildings of a century ago, quite different from the more decorative buildings of the same period in my home city, Melbourne. So I find them fascinating to look at:

Saving the best for last, however, I ended up at MKT, a tavern within the former Strathcona train station. This combined two things I greatly admire - railways and craft beer - in the one convenient location:

So I drank a beer from Alberta at slightly too early an hour on a warm day, and enjoyed the architecture of the railway which had created the neighbourhood in the first place.

Disclosure: On this trip, I travelled courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission.

Contemplating the Spin Cycle

This week's guest post is by fantasy author Narrelle M Harris...

One of the pleasures about packing light is that the traveller must make time once a week to wash.

Yes, I said ‘pleasures’ rather than ‘problems’. I don’t refer simply to how nice it is to have a bag replete once more with clean socks ‘n’ jocks.  I mean that this simple little chore has attractions all of its own.

When I’m travelling, I like grand panoramas. I love seeing the great landscapes, the beautiful buildings, and the highlights featured in the guidebooks.

But I also love seeing the small details of life for locals.

I enjoy wandering through regular neighbourhoods, observing how suburban architecture and front yards reflect a different way of life, or puzzling the impact of light industry bumping up against ordinary shopping strips and residential streets.

Laundromats, bless their soap-scented air, are primarily located in the suburbs. A walk to a laundromat in a foreign city is also a stroll through the social life of a place.

It’s a glimpse into everyday lives and details that are odd to an outsider. As a writer, that kind of detail is invaluable; as a person curious about other people, it poses questions of how others experience the world. 

The way residential architecture can be so different from city to city; the types of plants in gardens; the toys and tools by doors; the stickers on letterboxes; the graffiti on walls; whether people in their yards smile hello – all these elements of a town add texture and depth to your understanding of it.

One of the other simple pleasures of wash day is the little bubble of quiet the chore creates. This can be especially valuable if two or more of you are travelling together.

You spend each day sharing your experiences, which is brilliant, but it’s also nice to split up for a bit and reunite with unshared observations. And no matter how well you get on, or how much you love each other, you occasionally need a little ‘me’ time.

Being on the road is tremendously stimulating and exciting, but it’s also exhausting.

It can be good to take a break from it, to let the dust settle. Perhaps to consolidate some of that experience by writing about it: in a journal or a blog, or in postcards to distant friends.

A week into our trip to Canada, some days of which were spent in the north-western wilderness looking for bears, it was time to freshen up. Time for time out from the rush of travel with its tiny/terrifying plane rides and bone-rattling buses, and this urban girl’s startling proximity to capital-N Nature.

As much as I loved the Great Bear Lodge, it was extraordinarily pleasant to find a laundromat in a pretty back street of Victoria, British Columbia beyond the populous tourist harbour; to be surrounded by houses and shops, to talk to a kindly local to work out how to use the coin machines, to chat about the weather and seek a recommendation for coffee.

The laundromat I visited in Edmonton offered similar simple pleasures, as I conversed with the owners about our trip, and used the washing time to write about it too.

Laundromats are, I find, little oases on journeys.

Surrounded by the hum and rattle of washing machines, kept warm by the heat generated by the mesmerising turn of a dryer, I write postcards and blog about my adventures, all the better to consolidate my observations and emotions.

I read a little, I contemplate the world, and at the end of my two hours of retreat – I have clean underwear.

That, people, is a little bit magical.

When not hanging around foreign laundromats, Narrelle M Harris writes awesome fiction such as her latest cross-media project, the rock and roll fantasy Kitty and Cadaver. Check out the Kitty and Cadaver website to read the first six chapters for free, or to download them for your mobile devices.

Jasper, Canada: Echoes of Edith Cavell

The more I travel, the more I stumble upon links between places scattered across the globe.

For example, in 2011 I visited Belfast, UK, to trace the origins of the SS Titanic, a year before the centenary of its sinking. A year later I was in Halifax, Canada, at the cemetery where the bodies of many of the victims of the tragedy were laid to rest.

As part of the same 2011 trip, I visited the tiny Irish village where Ned Kelly's dad stole the pigs which saw him transported to Australia as a convict. This neatly matched an earlier journey through the High Country of Victoria, Australia, writing about the newly established Ned Kelly Touring Route.

And then there was Edith Cavell.

I won't go deeply into her story here - you can find it comprehensively covered in the relevant Wikipedia entry.

In a nutshell, however, Cavell was a British nurse who stayed in place after the German occupation of Belgium in World War One. Ostensibly treating combatants on behalf of the Red Cross, she secretly assisted Allied soldiers to escape capture and leave the country.

As a result, the German authorities arrested her, tried her under military law and executed Cavell by firing squad in 1915.

This shocking act was, as you can imagine, a serious propaganda blunder on the part of the German occupiers. The execution of a nurse filled front pages everywhere, reinforcing the line the British Empire and its allies were pushing about Germans' inherent brutality.

A wave of sympathy followed, with the erection of monuments to Edith Cavell around the world.

With the passing of time and another brutal worldwide conflict having taken place between her time and ours, Cavell's story has been largely forgotten among the general public.

So I knew nothing about her when I happened across her statue in the Kings Domain gardens in my home city of Melbourne, researching items for my mobile app Melbourne Historical.

Here it is, the plinth beneath bearing her statement made the night before her death, "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone":

As interesting as Cavell's story had been to discover, I wasn't expecting to encounter it again. But last year, visiting Norwich, UK, in the company of a Wodehouse Society tour, I happened upon this pub:

And across the street, near Norwich Cathedral, was this striking monument:

On investigation it turned out that Cavell was a daughter of Norfolk, having been born just outside Norwich in the village of Swardeston.

Finally, Cavell far from my mind, I arrived in Jasper, Canada, yesterday by train across the Rocky Mountains from Vancouver. On the drive from the railway station to our accommodation at Jasper Park Lodge, the driver pointed out a lofty peak in the distance and said "That's Edith Cavell."

You can see it below, in the centre of the picture beyond the attractive grounds of the Lodge:

Reaching an impressive 3300 metres, this snow-capped mountain was given Cavell's name in 1916.

Its earlier title, "La Montagne de la Grande Traverse" (Great Crossing Mountain), was granted by French-Canadian fur traders who used the nearby Athabasca Pass.

Renamed after the nurse whose execution shook the British Empire, Mount Edith Cavell is probably the most impressive and certainly the largest of her memorials. (At least on Earth - there's a 100km-wide Cavell Corona named after her on Venus. I suspect I'm unlikely to visit that one.)

Her story, though not so well remembered nowadays, is a tragic and fascinating one. And my unintended encounters with her memorials have reminded me how moving travel can be, when it allows you to join the dots of great historical events in person, rather than remotely via the experiences of others.

Disclosure time... On this trip I travelled courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission and VIA Rail.

The Canadian 2: Melville to Toronto

Here are some images from the second part of my 4,466 km train journey from Vancouver to Toronto on VIA Rail's flagship service, The Canadian...

1. Heading east from Alberta, we crossed into the next province, Saskatchewan. Usually each day we stopped somewhere for half an hour or so for train maintenance purposes, often just a small town. 

It was a brief opportunity to walk in another direction other than simply forward and backward, so most passengers got out for some fresh air and a photo opportunity. Here's me at the front of our mighty engine during our stop on day three in Melville, Saskatchewan:

 

2. It's amazing the things you see from the vantage point of a railway line rather than a main road. This car junkyard next to Melville Station was filled with ancient but photogenic wrecks.

3. It was rare to catch the dining car in such a pristine empty state, so I had to take a snapshot of this scene. The food was very good considering the tight space the catering staff had to work with.

Communal dining isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed the changing company each meal. At one sitting a young rail maintenance worker going on leave joined our table, so we were able to hear some interesting stories of life on the railroad.

4. The impressively grand Union Station in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The city had the common sense to keep its train station located in the middle of town, unlike other cities we had passed through on the way (I'm looking at you, Edmonton and Saskatoon). This grand edifice was created by the same architects who built Grand Central in New York:

5. I'd tapped into my Canadian tourism contacts to ask the pressing question, "What the hell do I do in Winnipeg for three hours on a Thursday night?". Emails flew back and forth between my iPhone, Sydney and Winnipeg.

As a result I found myself in the Times Changed High and Lonesome Club, a friendly local blues bar just two blocks from the station (if you knew where to look for it). It was 'Campfire Night' at the bar, so a bunch of musicians formed a circle of chairs and played some good music while I sipped a bourbon on the rocks. When it hit 10.30pm, I pulled a Cinderella routine and vanished back to the train.

6. Each day on the train was characterised by a distinctly different landscape. We spent the entirety of day four passing through an attractive but apparently deserted section of northwest Ontario, full of greenery and scattered lakes. And there was no mobile phone signal for THE ENTIRE DAY (quelle horreur!).

7. We made our only and very welcome stop for the day around 5pm. By this stage I think most of us were getting a little stir-crazy and were looking forward to reaching Toronto, as enjoyable as the journey had been.

The tiny town, Hornepayne, was a no-nonsense hamlet full of timber and railway workers. I strolled to the general store, then had a look around the few public buildings near the train station. This fire brigade sign rather caught my eye:

8. Finally on the Saturday morning, journey's end - Union Station, Toronto. The main hall seemed a suitably grand place in which to finish the epic trip from the Pacific; and from which to commence the next stage of my mission, an exploration of the urban delights of Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal...

[read the first instalment (Vancouver to Jasper) here]

Disclosure time... on this trip I travelled courtesy of VIA Rail.

The Canadian 1: Vancouver to Jasper

To paraphrase the late Douglas Adams, Canada is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

At least, you won't if you cross it by plane. Taking the train from Vancouver to Toronto, however, is another matter. I've just completed a rail journey between those two cities. On the way east was 4,466 km of Rocky Mountains, plains and lake country, and it took over three days for VIA Rail's flagship service The Canadian to make the journey.

In a cabin in Sleeper Class, with all meals included and access to raised viewing areas, it was a comfortable journey, and the simpler berths (like couchettes) looked reasonably comfortable too. Even the sit-up Economy Class seemed to have decent width to the seats and lots of legroom.

However, I must admit that after three days of travel I was looking forward to journey's end. 

Don't get me wrong - it was an enjoyable period of life in a long narrow steel-encased town that was in constant forward motion, as we passengers ate and socialised and made the odd stop in towns and cities along the way. 

But all good things must come to an end, and by day three I had seen my fill of the Canadian countryside and was looking forward to Toronto's urban action.

Here are some pictorial highlights of the journey...

1. Vancouver's Pacific Central Station, a grand place at which to begin this epic journey on a Tuesday evening. Curiously, the statue in the foreground is a copy of one I'd seen in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2008. 

2. The interior of my cabin. There was a stainless steel sink and a mirror inset in the wall on the left, and at night the car attendant made the armchairs magically disappear (I still have no idea how) and lowered the bunk beds which were otherwise locked away into the nearest wall and the ceiling.

3. This was our first stop on day two, Wednesday morning. The town is Blue River, and the building is British Columbia's oldest general store.

4. As we approached the province of Alberta, we were starting to get glimpses of the Rocky Mountains.

5. We passed this beautiful lake en route to Jasper.

6. With the train at rest at Jasper Railway Station, we had a spectacular view of the Rockies as a backdrop.

7. Jasper was definitely the most picturesque of the small towns we stopped at along the way, with a harmonious architecture that suited its mountainous location. Here's the local firehall.

8. And here's a new friend I made, outside a gift shop opposite the train station. I think we make a beautiful couple, n'est-ce pas?

Next week: My marathon rail journey continues, with fine dining, a rust bucket graveyard, a bourbon 'n' blues bar, lots of lakes, and a fire-fighting dog...

[read the second instalment (Melville to Toronto) here]

Disclosure time... on this trip I travelled courtesy of VIA Rail.