2013/07/26: No Montréal, no Toronto

Breakfast in Vieux Montréal, an afternoon walk at Toronto’s waterfront, bringing my backpack to a guesthouse in Toronto, boarding “The Canadian” (which is the most famous train in Canada, running from Toronto to Vancouver) at Toronto’s Union Station in the late evening: This has been the plan for today. Arriving in Montréal with a delay of 6 hours and 55 minutes (new personal record! Almost two hours more than California Zephyr in 2008!), no time in Montréal, not even a stop in downtown Toronto: this has been the reality. In Montréal I (successfully) tried my best to get my rucksack as fast as possible out of the baggage car and brought it to the afternoon train to Toronto, which had already waited about one hour for us. Thanks to Jonathan, the best chief of a train you can imagine, my backpack will spend the next weeks at Toronto’s Union station, which I won’t see today. The train I’m sitting on has a delay of more than one and a half hour, so I would be in Toronto when The Canadian had already left. That’s why I have to leave the train now in Oshawa, where three taxis (paid by VIA Rail) will bring the involved passengers to Washago, the second stop of the Canadian. My travel from Atlantic to Pacific was planned as a relaxing holiday, at the moment I’m feeling like Phileas Fogg on his race around the world…
The cause of the Ocean’s delay had been an engine problem during the night. Due to this problem we had so much delay that the engineer wasn’t allowed to drive anymore, so that we had to wait some hours in Rivière-du-Loup for a new engine driver…
Now one seemed to be surprised that the train was delayed, no one was complaining, everybody was relaxed (imagine the same situation in Germany! Mobile networks would collapse because 120 female members of a bowling club would have to call their husbands to inform them that they have to pick them up at the station later and that German Railway is absolutely terrible and that everything is terrible and that it is too cold/warm outside/inside and that they still don’t know what they should buy Gerda as a present for her birthday next week)…
After the departure in Montréal, the long welcoming announcement of the chief of the train was only presented in French. Break of one minute. Still no English announcement. Now the female bowling club members behind me begin to whisper, within 30 seconds ten women are having a stimulating discussion: “Should be English!” “Didn’t understand one word!” “I don’t speak any French!” “He should really repeat it in English”. Obviously a delay of six hours is no problem, but an only-French announcement is a huge problem. Canadians are absolutely relaxed people, as long as it doesn’t come to topics of bilingualism...