Railroads - Canada
The overwhelming thing about Canada is its sheer size. How can one train ride in a single country take three whole days and three whole nights? And you've still got further to go. No other form of transport conveys such an acute sense of Canada's vastness, of its beautiful, desolate, wide-open spaces. Endless stretches of track take you through a wilderness scarcely touched by man. You can travel for hours without seeing a road or a house, or indeed any sign of habitation - it's an incredible, almost haunting, experience. Back in 1872 an early traveller wrote a book about Canada's interior called 'The Great Lone Land'. It captured the North American imagination and became an instant best-seller. Today much of Canada is still a 'great lone land' that continues to fire the imagination of the modern traveller; the huge iron artery stretching across the continent is truly the best way to cross it. It is also the reason why this massive country exists at all. When the Dominion of Canada was created in 1867 it was no more than a set of loosely connected colonies with no sense of unity or nationhood. It was, moreover, under very real threat of being swallowed up by its powerful southern neighbour. The railroad was the single most important reason why this never happened: it gave the new country its life-blood and bound the provinces together into a transcontinental nation. When the last spike was driven in on 7 November 1885 it paved the way for rapid expansion, mass immigration and economic boom. Urban development ran parallel to the tracks and the stops along the line became the backbone of the new nation - which makes a rail trip today a fascinated journey into this young country's history. Afterall, a rail ride across Canada is a supremely relaxing experience, a rare joy in today's climate of rapid communications and jet-travel. In the word of Robert Louis Stevenson, ' the train disturbs so little the scenery through which it takes us, that our heart becomes full of the placidity and stillness of the county.' Nowhere is this more true than in Canada.
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