{"id":16703,"date":"2012-08-31T00:06:33","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T05:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16703"},"modified":"2012-08-30T13:22:22","modified_gmt":"2012-08-30T18:22:22","slug":"the-northlander-was-like-northern-ontario-on-wheels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/08\/31\/the-northlander-was-like-northern-ontario-on-wheels\/","title":{"rendered":"The Northlander<\/em> “was like northern Ontario on wheels”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> remembers Ontario Northland’s The Northlander<\/em>, which the Ontario government will be phasing out next month:<\/p>\n

Long-distance rail travel for real folks, as opposed to wealthy tourists, took another sad hit recently with the announced cancellation of the Northlander<\/em> \u2014 the Ontario Northland Railway\u2019s leisurely 11-hour putter from Toronto\u2019s Union Station to Cochrane, Ont., whence the more legendary Polar Bear Express<\/em> will still take you to Moosonee, on James Bay.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not sad in any commercial sense: The provincial government claims each ticket sold was subsidized to the tune of $400 (though other mathematical interpretations are available). And it\u2019s not sad because senior citizens will now be crammed on to buses to go to their far-flung medical appointments. That\u2019s unfortunate, no question: Trains are fundamentally more civilized than buses. But many communities the size of those served by the Northlander<\/em> don\u2019t even have buses anymore. This is the age we live in.<\/p>\n

I find it sad, firstly, because I have fond childhood memories of that trip. There used to be a train that ran past Cochrane, all the way to Kapuskasing, where we had family friends, and it used to run overnight. There was something wonderfully odd about getting ready for bed while trundling up the Don Valley. In the winter, the train was like a strange, slow teleportation to a different planet: You went to sleep in Toronto\u2019s grey-brown approximation of the season and awoke, after a night of groggily perceived stopping and starting, horn blasts and various crashes and bangs, to a blinding white, empty snowscape. Stumbling to the dining car \u2014 well, the box-of-cereal-and-milk car \u2014 you would find the spaces between the cars encased in snow and ice, like the inside of an old freezer.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t fast, or slick. It was a bit ramshackle. But it was folksy. It was like northern Ontario on wheels.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The earlier post<\/a> on the cancellation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley remembers Ontario Northland’s The Northlander, which the Ontario government will be phasing out next month: Long-distance rail travel for real folks, as opposed to wealthy tourists, took another sad hit recently with the announced cancellation of the Northlander \u2014 the Ontario Northland Railway\u2019s leisurely 11-hour putter from Toronto\u2019s Union Station to Cochrane, Ont., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,237],"tags":[45,87,793,207],"class_list":["post-16703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-railways","tag-nostalgia","tag-ontario","tag-subsidies","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4lp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16703"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16705,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16703\/revisions\/16705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}