From the Pacific to the Atlantic - Crossing Canada by Train
2 October - 5 November 2024

After living in Toronto for the 1985 year, we headed back to New Zealand by taking the train from Toronto to Vancouver, before flying out to Auckland. It was Winter, January 1986, and the train was delayed by snow drifts. It stopped in Thunder Bay while they de-iced the bogeys and brakes.

Having now taken train journeys in many countries, and cruised from the Black Sea to the North Sea (see the Danube Cruise pages here) we decided it was time to travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans by train. "The Canadian" takes you from Vancouver to Toronto; intercity trains take you to Montreal and the Océan takes you to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Eight days on the train if you try it as a single journey. And of course you can go WEST from Halifax rather than EAST from Vancouver.

We looked at timetables and the costs. We looked at the seasons and the weather (June is hot and full of tourists; September/October is Fall with nice colours in the trees and smaller crowds but attractions start to close by early October). We looked at the other places we could visit, and we looked at how we could cover off some of our family history in Montreal, Quebec and New Brunswick. To bring all these competing interests together we decided to fly to Vancouver, take The Canadian to Toronto, fly to Deer Lake in Newfoundland, see the maritime provinces then work our way west to Halifax, Quebec and Montreal before flying back to Vancouver and home. (OK, the purist will note the small gap in the rails between Toronto and Montreal, but we did the Toronto-Ottawa section in 1985 so feel we can claim to have done all of the journey worth doing.)

We also noted that on this trip we would spend some time in all of the Canadian provinces - British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. (We missed the Northwest Territories and Nunavik - but these are on our 2025 agenda.) So read on and see how we faired...

Paul and Colma, November 2024

Our Itinerary

Air New Zealand does an excellent job on their Auckland to Vancouver flights. It might be 13 hours squashed on a plane, but it was one of our better flight experiences across the Pacific. Not to mention the quiet efficiency of Canadian Immigration on arrival, quite the opposite of our past distasteful experiences in Los Angeles.

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Last updated: 15 December 2024