Cream of the Crop - Autumnal Geekquinox 2024

The date for Pete and Ellen's bi-annual dinner party was set months ago (a little earlier than the actual equinox, as sometimes happens), but he only sent around the theme a couple of weeks ago: "The Cream of the Crop." Well, who doesn't love a creamy dish or dessert prepared by an experienced cook? But it did make coming up with appropriately thematic wear a bit trickier, given my refusal to wear a crop top. Luckily a co-worker's costume from last fall gave Audrey an idea:

Things got off to a creamy start with Boozy Creamsicles to drink: a creamy, frothy drink as orange as its namesake and amped up with vodka and mango liqueur but barely any perceptible alcohol. It would be far, far too easy to drink too many of these at one go!

These were followed up by the first food course, which you might mistake for garden-variety potato skins. These were in fact individually hollowed out and deep fried tiny potatoes which not only cooked them to a perfectly fluffy consistency but added a delicious crispiness to the edges. The cheese, bacon, scallion and sour cream fillings completed them delightfully and the dash of salt on the skins was the perfect accent. And you could theoretically fill these with anything...

This was followed by a dish inspired by a classic/infamous Seinfeld bit, the Soup Nazi's Crab Bisque soup. This was really the star of the show in my opinion, and represented a tremendous exertion of effort on part of the cook, who had been prepping it since Thursday. Diced vegetables, then sautéed, then added to a scratch-made stock and then finally adding braised crabmeat - it was absolutely astonishing. Truth be told, it was too tasty for me to savour it appropriately and try to discern the multiple tastes and textures upon my palette, such was my zeal for reaching the bottom of my bowl. Pete's crab bisque has become the dish to which all future soups shall be measured against - bravo sir!

The Duck Hunt cocktail that followed the soup had a similar bill of exertion applied to it. The base of the drink is duck-fat washed bourbon, which involves heating liquefied duck fat with bourbon, freezing it, then skimming away the fat, repeatedly. Similarly to milk-washing spirits (which sounds kind of like creatures from a Japanse horror movie), this imparts a savory quality to the spirit, but less up front and more perceptible in the aftertaste.

Pete was disappointed he didn't have time for subsequent freezings and skimmings which would have clarified the liquor, but it hardly made for an unappealing presentation, especially accompanied by an immense, crystal clear ice cube.

Taste-wise it was really something - the tanginess of the bourbon complemented by citrus and bitters, then followed by a savoury richness - umami, maybe? - from the fat-washing. Anyone who has cooked potatoes in duck fat probably has a sense of what I am talking about, but this was an unconventional and delicious cocktail.

The green beans and cream dish was skipped for time (and to make room), so the next dish was the butter chicken, which I neglected to get a picture of, but you've all seen this ubiquitous dish, and Pete's scratch made variety looks pretty similar.

But. There is a decidedly discernible difference in both taste and texture!

Now, I love getting a jar of sauce, frying some chicken in the wok, simmering it all together and serving it over some rice, a Venn diagram of convenience and tastiness that overlaps nearly completely. Pete will be the first to admit that his additional efforts - which includes but is not limited to toasting his own spices before grinding them and preparing the sauce, plus marinating and broiling the chicken to get some crispiness - do not increase the taste of the end product by a sufficient enough degree to make it a worthwhile tradeoff in all cases. But is it significantly better? Oh, believe it. 

Aromatic, faintly piquant, criminally rich and completely delicious. Even if I had Pete's culinary skills, I would be unlikely to expend this degree of exertion on a dish I can obtain by such easier means and which is completely palatable, but I am so, so grateful to be friends with someone who not only can, but does!

The next beverage, limonada Suiça or Swiss lemonade, is actually a Brazilian recipe using limes - the first batch ended up being unstrained, leaving a fair bit of pulped zest in the mix. It was still a tasty tipple, using condensed milk to add both sweetness and creaminess but requiring delicate straining through one's dentition. 

The final dish of the night was the fluffiest cheesecake I have ever had, raising far higher than you might expect and topped with sweet, tangy raspberries in a thick compote.

The cheesecake was far more rich than it was sweet, and you could feel the richness around the base of your tongue, by the sides. Whether this was due to the orange blossom water or the goat cheese, I cannot say. Absolutely magnificent, and the perfect capper to almost ten hours of eating, drinking, and fellowship!

The Trip Not Taken

Back in my third and fourth year of university at Augustana in Camrose, a lot of us were Twin Peaks fans.

David Lynch and Mark Frost's quirky, surreal and stylish murder mystery with supernatural overtones was decidedly not for everyone, so oftentimes a group of people would gather to watch episodes in my dorm room. The wait from May to September to resolve the cliffhanger after a major character was shot was one of the longest I had ever experienced, transcending even the season carry-over during the Borg War in Next Generation.

It was an offbeat show that attracted a lot of offbeat people, like me, my friends, and even a few people in the freshman dorms who similarly found themselves exiled from the communal tv in the lounge. (Kids, this was way before mobile phones, let alone a time when you could watch shows on them. Good video even on a computer screen was still eyars away!) They would pile into my room in Solheim, glued to the 14" tv that was once the mopnitor for my TRS-80 Colour Computer.

(Funny sidebar: when I visited the Edmonton Journal offices to get a copy of the Garneau Block signed by author (and then columnist Todd Babiak) as a gift for a friend, he immediately recognized me as 'Twin Peaks guy', which I found delightfully validating.)

Anyhow, sometime early in 1991, a number of us toyed with the idea of taking a road trip during spring break down to Snoqualmie, Washington, where they filmed Twin Peaks. The diner, the hotel, the waterfall, they were all there to be seen and it wasn't even that far of a drive...but it never happened.

I can't even tell you why this expedition didn't come together, whether it was concerns over possible cost, vehicle reliability, dealing with treacherous mountain roads in February as well as a border crossing or something else. Did any of us even have a credit card at that point? And to be clear, all of those are pretty good reasons not to undertake such an odyssey!

But when I recall that road trip, I never think of it in terms of a bullet dodged, but always as an opportunity lost. 

And not just because the show that inspired the journey has become a legit cult classic, and not just because I still keep in touch with one of the other people and would love to recollect that trip with him, and not just because one of the people who were interested has passed away and another is a person I haven't had contact with since they showed up at my father's funeral. Or maybe it is all those things. 

The main source of regret is that I have no idea what I did do during that spring break, and even if it had involved returning to school later than expected with a repair or tow truck bill in hand, I know those memories would have been, well, memorable, to say the least.

This is why I am so glad Glory took advantage of her own recent opportunity, albeit in a much different context.

She and Fenya had just returned from Churchill and were attending the Hozier concert together before Fenya returned to Toronto. A number of people had dropped in to say hi, including Audrey's sister Vera, who had recently left a terrible job situation, but was looking at another potential opportunity sooner than she'd expected. 

Since her Spanish had been getting rusty due to lack of use (she had lived in Guatemala with Peace Brigades International for a time and is also a translator for hire), she started looking at a trip to Guadalajara, Mexico and found a reasonable airfare. Overhearing her musings, Glory had jokingly asked, "hey, can I come with you?"

Vera said, "well, I leave Saturday and come back the following Saturday, doesn't that muck up your schooling?"

A quick check confirmed that Glory would indeed be back in time for her first class, and having enough money in tips alone (!) to cover airfare etc. and the unexpected willingness of her aunt to let her accompany her, she quickly agreed, and a week after returning home from up north, she departed again for a week down south!

Spontaneity has never been my gift, and I know, I know, that I have missed many an opportunity due to my reluctance to take a leap of faith. I am often grateful for my cautious nature - it has also saved me a number of times! But there are other times where I recognize the detriment that goes with it.

Glory, in the meantime, enjoyed a week with a beloved relative, experienced traveller, skilled translator and appreciator of Mexican and Latinx culture, far from the all-inclusive resorts and tourist zones that many of her classmates have frequented in the past. The photos and stories she has shared paint a picture of a culturally enriching trip that was also a ton of fun. I am a little jealous, but mostly I am proud of her being able to seize that opportunity.

And who knows? If Audrey and I ever end up making our long-talked-about trip to Seattle, Snoqualmie isn't even that far away...

Alberta 2024: Corruption, Incompetence, or Both?

(CAUTION: Politics incoming!)

My province is a shambles.

Our premier, Danielle Smith, barely managed to secure a majority until after six rounds of balloting at the UCP leadership race in 2022, and was elected with a reduced majority in May 2023 after ousting Jason Kenney. Now, supported by an increasingly bold band of angry cranks and right-wing reactionaries, her government somehow feels entitled to make increasingly deranged changes.

She decided last year to somehow find efficiencies in our health care by disassembling Alberta Health Services into four separate entities. If creating barriers and silos to create efficiency in an organization considered a global leader in integrated health care only six years ago seems counter-intuitive to you, rest assured, you are not alone. And learning recently that a 41-year-old man died of cancer before ever being referred to an oncologist really felt like an alarm bell going off.

Since then, Smith or her party has:

• announced (officially) an official policy on pronoun usage in schools
• announced (at a party meeting) that the Alberta Sheriffs will become the new provincial police force, despite 78% of Albertans wanting to maintain the RCMP
• has announced (at a party meeting again- not publicly) the transfer of some hospital authority from AHS to faith-based provider Covenant Health, which will prohibit those hospitals from offering reproductive health options as well as end-of-life choices such as MAID
• had her husband, a restaurant owner, attend confidential internal government discussions about a high-proposed high-speed rail link between Calgary and Banff
• has appointed Clownvoy lawyer Brendan Miller, who you may remember was actually ejected from the Emergencies Act inquiry for interrupting testimony, to the Law Enforcement Review Board
• mused to supporters about moving provincial services and ministries out of the major cities and into rural areas
• denied there is any wrongdoing or conflict arising from her, her staff, and her ministers accepting luxury skybox tickets to Stanley Cup playoff games from major donors, industry bigwigs, and the supplier of the Turkish tylenot she bought

(image by Michael Nabert for his Medium article)

It is quite the flurry of activity, which most observers attribute to her upcoming leadership review and the growing discontent of the far-right element of a party sliding further to the right every week. This element, largely represented by David Parker and the wanna-be MAGAs of the north, Take Back Alberta, also includes everything from rural small-c conservatives looking for a better deal to straight up separatists who see an Alberta police force, pension and bill of rights as steps along the path to eventual independence.

In the middle are a lot of scared, low-information people susceptible to misinformation and terribly fearful of creeping socialism, sharia law, the gay agenda, the woke mind virus et cetera.

But I can't believe they will continue to support a party that appears to be doing everything they can to cripple public healthcare in this province.

Breaking AHS up into four new agencies with more overhead, management and intersecting bureaucracies should be an offense to any thinking adult, let alone a government that actually passed "red tape reduction" legislation.

Emergency room closures are becoming a regular occurrence in this province, especially in rural areas. Staffing issues (caused by hiring freezes, caused by AHS's new government appointed leadership) means existing front line care providers are burning out like cheap Christmas bulbs while accredited nurses can't find full-time positions anywhere in the province. Meanwhile, other provinces like B.C. are scooping them up in droves.

A cynical person might suggest that the UCP aren't actually trying to fix public health care delivery at all, but are hamstringing it and delivering the death of a thousand cuts so it can collapse and be replaced by a for-profit system. Why else would Premier Smith suggest that AHS has a virtual 'monopoly' on health care? Whey would she offer the notion that "competition and fear" will provide better health services for Albertans?

Whether it is willful negligence or merely deep-seated incompetence, the UCP have shown an inability to deliver health care, something Premier Smith assured supporters she would sort out in the first 90 days of her premiership, which started 692 days ago as I write this.

And criminally mishandling health care delivery is only one of the above-bulleted axes many Albertans have to grind. It is a level of nincompoopery and corruption that belongs in a backwater or banana republic and not the home of the increasingly elusive "Alberta advantage."

Worst of all, it is three years until the next election, which the shady gits have already pushed from the previous 'fixed election date' in May until October so as not to coincide with wildfire season. Which, hey, at least makes sense, what with the UCP being the ones who cut the funding for wildfire-fighting the year before Jasper nearly burned to the ground.

What will be left of this province in October of 2027? Will the premier still be Danielle Smith or an even more selfish ideologue? Will she have succeeded into moving everyone onto vouchers for health care, schooling, pensions and who knows what else? Will the Wexiters and separatists, libertarians and Objectivists still be pulling her strings, or she theirs?

Or will something else happen in the meantime?

Someone raised the fascinating point the other day that it would only take six members crossing the floor to bring this government down. How intriguing...

I am not much of a joiner, politically, but I (and many others it seems) have signed up for AB Resistance. They describe themselves as "...a non-partisan grassroots movement listening to Albertans of all political stripes who are worried about the damage the UCP is doing to Alberta. We want to do something about it." Hey, me too!

Maybe this group can find the last six UCP backbenchers with a conscience and convince them to change sides - a real long shot in a government with the largest cabinet in  decades, if not Alberta history (small government - snort). 

Regardless of whatever approach AB Resistance end up taking, waiting to vote three years from now is not an option for me, and neither is just carping about the situation to like-minded folks. This gamble doesn't even cost me a stamp, and if you have similar concerns, maybe give them a look and let's see what happens.

It should be clear to everyone paying attention that Alberta can't continue like this - and shouldn't have to.

Telephony Protocols

When I was a kid living in New Brunswick, we lived in a farmhouse in the country and had a party line. This meant a number of households shared a single telephone line, and each household had its own designated ring so you knew when a call was for you. 

If you picked up the phone to make a call, you had no way of knowing whether or not someone else was already using the line, or how long they might be using it for. There was always the risk of picking up the handset and accidentally hearing a personal conversation that was absolutely none of your business, or the possibility of someone listening in to yours.

The phone also had a rotary dial, something fairly common well into my teenage years, as I recall, although most homes had at least one newfangled "push-button" phone.

When we moved to Leduc, we initially had a single phone on the wall in the kitchen, and then extension lines with the same number pulled to my parent's bedroom and to Dad's desk in the basement. When I was a teen, and Tara and I were both using the telephone more, he got us our own phone line with a different number, which felt tremendously important.

When I got a little bit older this separate line meant I could use my TRS-80 Colour Computer and 300 baud modem to explore the earliest online communities - bulletin board systems (BBS) and message boards and the like.

In college I got a retro candlestick phone (I have no idea where from) which looked marvelous, but made two-handed phone conversations kind of mandatory, and doing anything else while talking almost impossible. College was also where a colleague showed me the first cordless phone in the hands of a peer, an incredibly stylish little folding handset that flipped open like the communicators on Star Trek.

I was late to getting a mobile phone, and it would have been longer had I not required one for work, I think in 2005 or so. When I left that job in 2007, I was already so acclimatized to having one I got a basic pay-as-you-go device, and one later for Audrey.

Later on there came smart phones, but I didn't bother with a mobile date plan until, again, it became a work requirement in 2016 (and a perk, as they paid for it too). When my job changed in 2020, I found the data too hard to give up, so again I got a basic plan. With so many places having data, I don't usually go over the 1GB per month I pay for, but when travelling, it does happen.

Now everyone has a phone, almost everywhere we go, and it feels unnerving to be out of touch even for a little while. Audrey and I drove to Toronto from Edmonton in 1995, calling our folks from motel phones along the way on most days. This year in driving to Flin Flon on our way to Churchill, being out of service on Hansen Lakes Road felt unfamiliar and disturbing.

Many younger people don't like phone calls out of the blue, preferring a text asking for permission. I rarely talk for long periods on the phone, preferring a video chat on any number of platforms on my phone, tablet or PC. Unfamiliar numbers go straight to voicemail.

It occurred to me the other day that kids answering a household phone has probably been a thing of the past for a while now, at least in the majority of homes. What child growing up today will ever have cause to place their hand over the receiver of a shared communications device and bellow, "MOM! DAD! PHONE FOR YOU!"? This would probably seem completely peculiar to the young folks watching Winona Ryder pick up her kitchen handset with the extra-long cord so many of us had and asking "why does her phone have a tail?"

I mentioned this in passing to a coworker who confessed that if a boy called for his older sister while she was indisposed (and presumably a few times when she wasn't) he would inform them, "she can't come to the phone right now, she's taking a dump."

Busy signals, answering machine messages, all things of the past, largely, replaced by interactive voice menus and automated callbacks - but I don't imagine any of us miss being tethered by that curly cord, even the extra-long ones.

Texans Meet Belugas

Most visitors to Churchill, Manitoba, even in the heat of summer, hope to get a glimpse of a polar bear.

But not the Carrolls - a family from Texas that Audrey and I met on the train from Thompson.

The Carrolls were seated across the aisle from the two of us, their seats facing each other. They were grandmother Marge, her son Michael, daughter-in-law Stephanie, and their young adult son Sean (and I hope I didn't misspell these names too badly!).

From what I understood, they had driven all the way from Arlington, Texas, to Thompson so they could take the train to where they could view beluga whales in the wild. I recall perhaps one or more of them disliked flying, and since flights into Churchill are pretty expensive anyways, why not road trip it?

Michael and Stephanie were pretty close in age to Audrey and I, and all the Carrolls were extremely nice people. Since Audrey and I had made this rail pilgrimage on four previous occasions, we were only too happy to outline what to expect, how the reclining seats worked and how to get the conductor to rotate one of their seat pairs to give them a bit more leg room.

I learned that Marge had been the impetus for the trip, and that seeing beluga whales in their natural environment had been on her bucket list for years. I was astonished, stating how amazing it was that they had (effectively) travelled from one of the largest non-oceanic water bodies in North America (the Gulf of Mexico) to the other (Hudson Bay) to witness such a whimsical animal. That is nearly 1800 miles! At any rate, we exchanged phone numbers so that if they needed anything or had any other questions once in town, we could try to help.

Our train pulled into Churchill around 10:30 Tuesday morning, and the Carrolls made their way to the Seaport Hotel - conveniently, the same place their bus for the beluga zodiac tour would pick them up the next day, before catching the train back Thursday evening. Meanwhile, my cousin Parker picked us up and brought us to his house before he boarded the southbound train that very same evening, as he was flying to meet his girlfriend in Costa Rica the next day.

In addition to letting us stay in the house he had recently remodeled, Parker had also graciously left us the use of a vehicle, which gave me an idea. I texted Stephanie and asked if they wanted a quick drive around Churchill the next day, to see some of the attractions you can't reach on foot. She quickly agreed and we arranged to meet up late the next morning. 

Sean elected to stay home, but when I got to the Seaport, the other three were raring to go, so I drove them past the port to Cape Merry (the blue "1") on the map.

This is a gun battery intended to help defend the harbour along with the imposing Fort Prince of Wales (5) across the Churchill River. There is also a memorial cairn for Jens Munk, the Danish explorer who came here seeking the Northwest Passage in 1619, but returned home with only two other members of his 64-man crew after a brutal winter on the shores of Hudson Bay.

But we were there for the belugas, because from the battery you can not only see them clearly in the river, you are close enough to hear them too.

The Carrolls at Cape Merry

Marge was thrilled, snapping pictures with her 3 or 400mm lens and recording some video. Michael and I walked out to the cairn and I discovered he was also quite a Rush fan, which I found delightful.

Stephanie and Marge must have spent 40 minutes entranced by the frolicking cetaceans, but there was more to see, and of course, a closer encounter with them scheduled for later that day. We drove out to the Churchill Northern Studies Centre and the old rocket range, driving past the rusting hulk of the MV Ithaca just offshore, and also made our way over to see Miss Piggy, the wreck of a C-47 cargo plane.

And it was somewhere on that drive that Marge told me the story that explained precisely why she was so fascinated by beluga whales, and I apologize for any details I have incorrect here.

Many years ago, the family had visited Sea World in San Antonio. Fascinated by the white whales even then, they had either wandered into or stayed in the amphitheatre while one of the belugas was swimming, and he began interacting with them. Marge had apparently been encouraging him to spit water out of his tank and into the seating area, when one of the trainers came by to explain they really shouldn't be there. But as sometimes happens, they ended up chatting him up, learned this particular male whale's name was Beethoven, and I believe Stephanie ended up onstage or helping with the next performance.

Years later at a different aquarium (I want to say Chicago?), Marge was looking at belugas through an underwater window. One of them was 'standing' nearly vertically in the water, looking directly through the glass at Marge, his fins almost looking like they could be waving at her. 

Marge asked a trainer if the whale was able to see her, and when she saw which whale it was, she said, "oh yeah, Beethoven? He's a lover, that one."

It turns out that being a male beluga capable of breeding while in captivity placed Beethoven in high demand, and Marge encountered him a third time at yet another facility elsewhere in the U.S. 

Now, could you prove that this highly intelligent sea mammal could not only see this lady from Texas, but also remember and recognize her? Of course not. But Marge thinks he could and I believe Marge, so as far as I am concerned that settles it.

All the Carrolls were very grateful for a chance to get a little ways out of town and see some of the surrounding area and thanked me profusely when I dropped tham back off at their hotel, but in truth, I was just returning some of the enormous privilege of having been taken to all of those places (and more!) on my previous visits. I appreciated a small chance to pay it forward.

The next day, the four of us made our way down to the Seaport for our own beluga excursion, and saw the family from Texas sitting outside as they waited for the train to arrive from Thompson so they could board it. They'd had a wonderful time on their own zodiac tour the day before, but again made sure to thank me for showing them the other sights. 

I think there is a pretty good chance they may come back some time in the future to take the Tundra Buggy tour and perhaps see Churchill's main animal attraction as well, but helping someone scratch an experience off their bucket list after such a long journey was tremendously gratifying!

Glory finally caught a beluga smile!

Lined Up

Sure,Folk Fest is about music, obviously; but at its core it is undeniably about lineups as well.

When greeting patrons outside the corral by Stage 1 a little before 7am, I said “welcome to the first of many lines.” And it was true!

They lined up to get in the corral for the tarp lottery, where we draw tickets to determine the order they will leave the corral and line up by the sidewalks around Gallagher Park until they can place their tarp on the hill.

I follow them on afterwards, and before my tarp is tacked down, there is already a lineup of 60+ people waiting to get into the music and merch tent and pick up CDs and t-shirts and the like.

And even if that's not your speed, you will be lining up for food, to go to the bathroom, to fill up your water bottle, or, if you have the stamina (and many, many do) there is an enormous but surprisingly quick line for the beer tent.

And tonight when it is all said and done, I will join the processional of tires but happy listeners moving slowly and carefully down the ski hill, and then join another line of volunteers waiting for the shuttle to take them back to the parking lot.


But until then, this is the lineup occupying the most space in my mind:

The Sleeper Car Experience

When Audrey and I planned our return trip from Churchill in July, we had initially planned to do the entire 14-hour drive from Thompson in one go, so we booked a sleeper cabin to ensure we were well rested. 

Tragically, this alone did not grant us the additional endurance required for such marathon travelling, but hey, you don't know unless you try, right? And sleeping in an actual bed, in a private room, on a moving train, was a very cool experience.

I want to say it was a little more than double the price, so two economy tickets (in a reclining seat, with a plug-in for my CPAP) would have been about $200, while a cabin for two made that part of the trip about $470 or so.

After loading our larger luggage onto the baggage car, we boarded the sleeper car directly from the rear of the train and our delightful attendant (porter? concierge? I'm not even sure), Val, showed us to our tiny cabin. And to be sure, claustrophobes need not apply - I never thought to try but am pretty sure I could touch all four walls without moving my feet from the center of the room. 

She showed us the features and amenities of the room (which included a wall-mounted fan) and advised we would need to let her know when we wanted the beds put out for sleeping, which we asked her to do at 11:00.

When she left and closed the door, we were left with a space about 5' x 7' with two relatively comfy reclining seats (albeit without the footrests of Economy class), a sink and mirror, and our own (tiny) washroom. We eventually figured out we could stow our two carry-ons in the 'attic' above the washroom which made our sitting area feel a bit more spacious and the sink had a little hinged cover we could set my iPad on to watch a movie later. 

We got ourselves situated pretty quickly and decided to go spend a little time in the observation car while it was still light outside.

On our way, we discovered that our car actually did have a shared shower we could use (although the rocking motion might make you rethink shaving with a blade). If you were travelling to Churchill from Winnipeg ( a 40+ hour endeavour) I am certain this amenity would be greatly appreciated!

And we also passed the car full of sleeping berths - small couches that face each other during the day and which convert to curtained bunks for sleeping at night, a la Star Trek: Lower Decks.

The domed car is usually a bit cool, so it is a good idea to bring a sweater. The very first seat is rear-facing, with a table between it and the next seat which makes it very popular with people who want to share a meal or play cards while enjoying the scenery. The remaining seats with their airline-style tray-tables provided a great space for me to sit and write my blog the next morning so I could post it on-schedule once we got back into wi-fi country.

There is also a small dining area in the area just below the dome, and a small canteen with coffee and light meals directly below it.

It had been a long day though, so we retired to our cabin to watch a movie on my iPad - Bullet Train, ironically, which I had downloaded from Netflix. Tragically I had not realized that my new iPad, purchase two months ago, did not have a headphone jack so we were unable to use my splitter. Luckily I was able to set my Bluetooth speaker on a suitcase between us so we could hear everything clearly enough over the ambient train nose and track clacking (but turned subtitles on anyways).

Shortly after the movie wrapped up, our porter (not Val) came by to convert our room, so we headed back up to the dome care for a few minutes while he did so. When we came back, he was wrapping up, but before leaving, asked if we wanted a knock on the door if the aurora borealis was visible that night. Audrey said yes without a moment's hesitation, and I thought this was a tremendous service to offer.

The beds do not leave a lot of room in the cabin once they are deployed, but are spacious and comfortable. There was a plug-in for my CPAP and room for it to rest near me at the head of the bed, as well as a shelf for my eyeglasses and a pouch I could tuck my iPad behind once I went to sleep.

Each bunk has its own reading lamp, and the upper one even has some sturdy nylon webbing to keep a sleeper safely in place if the train should experience excessive deceleration.

Now, the Churchill train is slow, peaking around 50 km/h, but not necessarily steady, proceeding as it does over muskeg and ground tormented by frost heaves. I worried that this would make it difficult to sleep, but in truth, the rocking back and forth is kind of soothing, and we both slept soundly through the night.

The next morning we hung the "Please make up our room" sign on the door (a first for me I believe) and headed to the canteen. We got two microwaved English muffin breakfast sandwiches and two coffees ($19) and ate them in the dome car.

When we returned to our room, the beds had been stowed and chairs replaced, and it was somewhat liberating being able to brush our teeth in our own sink without worrying that someone else was waiting to use the toilet. I doubt people on the Orient Express think about things like this, but having travelled this route seven times prior, it was a notable perk.

We arrived safe and sound in Thompson around noon, caught the shuttle to the campground where we had parked it (although the train station parking lot is apparently much safer than it used to be), and began the long drive home.

In the final analysis, can we say the Via Rail Cabin for Two was worth the money we paid for it? Well, certainly, for the experience, if nothing else. I have grown up seeing people sleep on trains in the movies and reading about it books since I was a kid, so getting to do it myself for once was extremely cool. And if a person valued their privacy, or required their own washroom, or preferred to isolate from other passengers for health reasons, this is certainly a good way to do it.

Would I pay the extra $135/person (each way) the next time Audrey and I make our northern pilgrimage? I am honestly not sure. I don't find the recliners that bad for sleeping and I would prefer to spend that money on dinner and drinks at the Tundra Pub, but if the budget allowed for it, I would certainly consider travelling by sleeper car in the future.

(And while eating breakfast in the dome car, I also learned from the conductor that Via Rail has one of the few corporate logos that is exactly the same when viewed upside down.)