Preface:
Before you begin this short story, I would like to give you a bit of an update to the narrative.
The train that Meera Riddell takes is a real train, or at least it was a real train. The Ontario Northlander ran from Toronto’s Union Station in the south to Cochrane in the north of Ontario, where you could get a connection to the Polar Bear Express.
The Northlander opened for service in 1976 and was unfortunately closed on 28 September 2012. The closure was a sad time for many, me included. I used to take the train between Toronto and North Bay for many years after I left the Canadian Forces and enjoyed the peaceful, beautiful, idyllic scenery along the track.
Each stop in the story is real, and the people, while not real, are a conglomeration of folks I have had the pleasure of meeting on the Northlander. What we take for granted soon disappears….. I hope you enjoy the story.
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The Train
Meera Riddell rolled over in her bed and pressed the snooze button on the clock radio, the volume as it went off was far too loud for her this early in the morning.
“Oh man.” She moaned and let the words drag out as she tried to open her eyes. The white quilted comforter was half tossed on the floor as she turned.
The digital screen on the radio showed the time as fifteen minutes past four in the morning and this was not Meera’s normal hour to wake. As a matter of fact, if it wasn’t for having to catch the train at six fifty, she would still be sleeping.
Once she managed to pry her eyes open about half way, the crusty white flakes of sleep started falling away. She looked out the window, the curtains were drawn about half way and the sliding window was open. It was dark, there wasn’t much light from the quarter moon that was now low in the sky. Nevertheless there was life outside that darkness. The sounds seeping through the window revealed a Toronto wakening up. Busses, street cars, trucks and cars stopped and accelerated past her low rise apartment. The sound of vehicular traffic mixed with the odd pedestrian rushing past was something she heard everyday, but never paid any attention to it. This morning was no exception and after so many years of living and working in the big city, the noises were just a distant background resonance.
This was the dawn of a busy work day for most, but Meera was starting a long deserved three week vacation. She was originally planning to head off to Jamaica with a friend, but those plans changed when a fire swept through the hotel. It would still be some time before the resort she had booked with was ready to accept guests. Timing was against her and she wasn’t able t re-book at another resort this late in the season, and with her friend now off to BC to visit family, a disappointed Meera was stuck in Toronto. This was supposed to be her dream vacation, but instead she would be visiting the Metro Zoo, shopping at the Eaton’s Centre and taking long walks down Yonge Street.
At least that was the case until some friend’s from work invited her to visit a cottage they rented up north. It wasn’t what she really wanted to do. After all, Northern Ontario was a far cry away from the lush tropical beaches of Jamaica. At first she could only envision black flies and fisherman dressed in plaid. It did however give her a chance to get away for a while. Toronto was beginning to shrink in on her and a feeling of claustrophobia was starting to bring her down.
North to Meera was places like Gravenhurst or Huntsville Ontario. Having growing up in Toronto she never really saw much of the outside world. Well, not if you don’t count the evening news and pictures from friends that had cottages in and around Huntsville. In this case, the North was Timmins Ontario and in her wildest dreams she never believed that she would ever be visiting Timmins.
