The best ride ever

So with only a few weeks left in 2021, I was watching a railroad video on YouTube when I realized that 50 years have gone by since the summer of 1971. That’s no big deal except it was a special time for me in that it was the first and only time I hopped a freight train.

But it was way more than that. It all began one summer evening in June of ’71 in North Bay. I was with Doug Abbott, one of my high school pals and we were walking along the side of Highway 17 heading toward the waterfalls on Duchesnay Creek. A lot of people would go there for the scenery. Abbott and I went there just for a bit of an after-supper hike and to smoke cigarettes. Sometimes, we would bring a few beers we stole from home. On this particular evening, we came across a backpacker hitchhiking along the highway. At the time, Highways 17 and 11 were called the North Bay Bypass. So we asked the guy where he was heading. He said he was going back to Toronto. He had already been out west to Vancouver, He explained that hundreds of young people like himself were criss-crossing Canada, riding their thumb to see different parts of the country. Suddenly what this guy said made sense. We had both noticed in recent days that a lot of hitchhikers were travelling through North Bay. It was a crossroads for east-west and north-south travel. 

 SEE CANADA FIRST 

 Also, the idea of hitchhiking had been in the news. Canada’s prime minister Pierre Trudeau had commented on a trend that many young Canadians were heading to the United States and Europe to go backpacking. Trudeau coined the phrase “See Canada First” and it had prompted thousands of young people to start travelling. Abbott and I began talking about what kind of fun that would be. School was over and neither of us had lined up summer jobs yet. Abbott said this was something we should do. Yeah, sure. So when? Right now, said Abbott. The idea became more and more attractive as the minutes ticked by. Let’s go talk to our parents, pack our gear and meet back here in one hour. So we did. I remember talking to my mom that night. She was not well at the time. Mom had multiple sclerosis and it was taking a serious toll on her. I told her Abbott and I wanted to do some hitchhiking across Northern Ontario and maybe head a bit further west. That particular year, my friends and I had made several weekend fishing and camping trips around the North. We would pack our gear, sleeping bags, camping equipment and fishing stuff and take off for two or three days. We did this winter and summer. It was normal for me to have my gear packed and ready. This latest venture didn’t seem out of the ordinary, so Mom was okay with it. I asked her for some money. Mom had $21. She gave it to me. I looked in the kitchen and grabbed a few cans of beans, tuna and whatever else looked good. I promised Mom I would keep in touch. Within an hour, I was back out of the bypass where I met Abbott. We were both grinning and excited. We put our thumbs out and in about 15 minutes we had a ride. I really can’t remember, but I believe the first ride took us to Sudbury. By then it was getting dark. It didn’t take long for us to hitch another ride and in that time we were heading for Sault Ste. Marie. The guy said he was heading into Michigan if we wanted to keep going and we said yes. Both of us had heard that you didn’t want to be heading north of Lake Superior and chance getting stuck in Wawa. I don’t remember where we slept that night but I have a recollection of being in Marquette, Michigan. It was not unusual for Abbott and I to throw down our poncho, unroll a sleeping bag and crash on any flat piece of dry ground we could find. We were experienced outdoors campers in that sense. The next day we continued our trip west, through Michigan, Wisconsin and into Minnesota. That’s where we made a right turn at Duluth and headed North. 

 It took us another day before we got to the Canadian border and to our surprise we were still in Ontario, where we crossed over at International Falls / Fort Frances. Thank goodness we both had Royal Canadian Air Force ID, as both our dads were in the RCAF at North Bay. The US border agents suspected we might have been American-born draft dodgers. They gave us a hard time for about 20 minutes and were not ready to let us go into Canada. So we continued thumbing. It was late afternoon; early evening and we had arrived in Kenora. Walking through the downtown, along Highway 17 we saw a Dairy Queen and there was a crowd of young people sitting on the steps there. Most of them of had backpacks. They were like us, they were hitchhikers. We stopped, bought cones and sat down to talk. Some were excited to share their experiences in coming from the west with plans to travel to Toronto, Montreal and Halifax. They were also surprised that Abbott and I had travelled through the U.S. south of Lake Superior. Puffed up with two days of experience we mentioned, hey you don’t want to take a chance on getting stuck in Wawa! 

That’s when I heard the most amazing story. One of the fellows had ridden a freight train through the Rockies. Wow! What a trip. I almost didn’t believe the guy. Then he said the most amazing thing. He said the train driver let him on the train without a hassle. A free ride. No problem. He just asked the guy and the guy said yeah, go ahead, jump on. So that was just the best story and it amazed me. I didn’t think I would ever give it another thought, but I would remember it about five days later. Abbott and I got ready to head out. It was dark by now. We would need to find a place to crash. That’s when one of the guys who was in the Dairy Queen crowd … just another young guy … asked where we planned to stay the night. We said we would likely head out to the edge of town and find a farmer’s field or something like that. The guy offered us to stay at his parent’s cabin. He said he was staying there, kind of house-sitting for his parents who were in Winnipeg. He said it was a big cabin right on the lake, maybe half a mile away. Wow, it was like Disneyland. This guy’s family had money. The cabin was nothing short of a luxury log cabin. We were prepared to unroll our sleeping bags and sleep on the floor, but we each had our own bedroom! Next morning, we enjoyed hot showers, a fresh shave and a real breakfast; coffee, orange juice, bacon, eggs, toast and jam. Abbott and I were amazed with our luck so far. This hitchhiking thing was the best. I made a point of picking up a postcard and sending it home to let my parents know where I was and that I was okay. This was in the time before the Internet and cellphones. Postcards were a good option. Over the next few days, I was able to send off a few more postcards. We had stops in Winnipeg, Portage La Prairie, Regina, Medicine Hat, Fort MacLeod and Calgary. We arrived in Calgary in the middle of a summer rain storm. We walked through the downtown area around suppertime hoping to find a youth hostel. It didn’t happen. Abbott and I did find a laneway next to the Eaton’ s store downtown that had several empty boxes for refrigerators. And that’s where we slept for the night. 

The morning after in Calgary was a beautiful sunny, summer morning after the rainfall. We found a gas station and diner on the western edge of town, right on Highway 1. I remember sitting at the counter where we drank coffee, ate toast, smoked cigarettes and listened to Janis Joplin singing Me and Bobby McGee on the jukebox. Looking off to the west, we could just make out some of the peaks of the peaks of the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. I was excited. This was going to be a great day. That’s when Abbott spoke up and said we had to take a slight detour. I looked at him like he was from another planet. “What are you talking about, man? We’ve got to get to Banff to see those mountains.” Abbott said he had promised his mom that we would stop for a short visit with his aunt who lived in a little town north of Calgary. I couldn’t believe it. “Come on man, we’ve got to keep moving. Do our thing. We don’t need to visit some old lady.” Looking back, I know I was stubborn. Abbott likely had made a sincere promise to his mom. I didn’t respect that and I should have. I was a jerk. A guy who makes a promise to his mom is honour bound to keep that promise. Abbott and I split up. He went north. I went west. I didn’t think I was being selfish at the time, but all these years later, it still bothers me. I got over it that morning when I thumbed a ride into Banff. I remember seeing the mountains for the first time. They were amazing. As we approached the entrance to Banff National Park, the car slowed down and I told the guy I wanted to get out. It was beautiful. Just outside the park entrance, there was a large sign, bigger than a billboard that was actually a chalkboard. Hundreds of people had left messages: Joey, I am going to Jasper. Susan, meet me in Regina. Johnny O is moving on to Vancouver. I wrote my name, with the date and then an arrow pointing to the word Vancouver. Maybe Abbott would see it. 

Long story short, I was walking through Banff, when I met up with one of the fellows I had met in Kenora. We began chatting and just ended up spending the day together. I still cannot remember his name. We didn’t have much money but we ate hot dogs and drank chocolate milk for a late afternoon supper. We began moving out of Banff and heading west to find a place for camp for the night. Rides were hard to come by because there were so many people trying to hitch rides. It might have been around 8:00 p.m. when were on a stretch of Highway 1 just west of Lake Louise. There wasn’t much road traffic. I looked out across the highway and in the distance, maybe 200 metres away, there was a CP Rail freight locomotive moving ahead and back. It was slowly building up a train, gradually adding cars. Suddenly I was inspired. I crossed the highway, climbed a little fence and began running across a field toward the train. I told Buddy to stay put and I would be right back. As I got close to the locomotive, I hollered at the train driver. “Are you going west?” Where are you headed, he asked. “Going to Vancouver” I am just going to Revelstoke, he said. “Is that west of here? I hollered back. Couple of hundred miles, he said. “Can we hitch a ride? I asked. He paused. Then he said. Jump in the third locomotive back there. We won’t be leaving for another hour. I ran back to Buddy laughing and smiling the whole time. I told him to grab all the stuff and head back across the field to the train. We did what the driver said and climbed up on to the third locomotive from the front. We opened the door and sat down inside. It was noisy as hell with a strong smell of diesel. Soon enough the train guy came back to talk to us. He bummed a smoke and then said we had to sit on the floor because he didn’t want us to be seen as the train slowed down at each station on the line. He said if a train cop saw us, they could force him to stop the train and we would be arrested. He added that he would claim he didn’t know anything about us. And so it was. We rode the train west through some of the most spectacular scenery in Canada. Yes it was at night, but the moon was out and we loved it. The Rockies, the Rogers Pass, the spiral tunnels, Glacier National Park, the Columbian Mountains, the Selkirk Mountains. We slept off and on, but it was too much fun to sleep the whole night. Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. it became daylight. The train began slowing down. Just as he said he would, the train driver slowed the train to about five miles per hour as he entered the Revelstoke yard limit. That was our cue to jump off. Several minutes later we walked into the coffee shop at the Revelstoke train station. The staff there saw us with our backpacks and seemed to know we had come in on the overnight freight train. We were tired and hungry. So we had a breakfast and talked about all the excitement of the night before. Ordinary hitchhiking would never seem as fun or interesting as riding the train through the Rockies.