Twelve days in distant Canada? Why not!

What you need to know:

  • I was in the Red Leaf service and there were at least two classes above me – Silver Leaf and Gold Leaf. But we did get a complimentary glass of wine with lunch.

Home from a 12-day holiday in Canada, I was asked what was the highlight of my visit. I said I could not decide between the Skyrider, the Niagara Falls and The Whizzer.

She frowned, puzzled, so I explained: The Skyrider took you at a leisurely pace over the heads of milling crowds thronging the fairground at the Calgary Stampede; the Niagara Falls offered a series of terrifying climbs and heart-stopping descents through gushing water, ending in a huge splash; and The Whizzer was that thing where you sit in chairs suspended from chains and the machine whizzes you ever higher, wider and faster so that if the chains broke, you would be catapulted all the way to the North Pole.

“You must be out of your mind,” my friend said. “And to answer your question,” I said, “I would go for The Whizzer.”

Of course, I understand why she looked aghast. A near octogenarian barrelling off to North America is bad enough, but going on fairground rides for screaming kids? I explained I did it to keep the little daughter of my Kenyan host company. Her dad graciously deferred the honour to me.

Now I know this Letter has nothing to do with London or even the UK, but like everybody freshly back home, it’s nice to talk about your hols.

For a week every year, Calgary in northwest Canada hosts what it proudly calls the Stampede, not actually stampeding cows through town like on the movies (as I was disappointed to discover), but a series of cowboy-type things such as rodeo, bronco riding, roping steers and so on, as well as gentler pursuits like showing prize farm animals and putting miniature horses through their paces. Everybody wears John Wayne-type Stetsons but I listened in vain for the jangle of spurs or the sound of gunshots at the OK Corral.

My Kenyan friend has been in Calgary eight years and has a supervisory job with a security company. The children are doing well at school. I detected no sign of Canadian accents.

To get to his city involved a nine-hour flight from Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Five, which has my nomination as the nearest possible version of Hell on Earth – overcrowded, confusing, dark, too few seats and not enough bars.

(There you are – something about London, after all!).

At the ungodly hour of five in the morning at the foot of Calgary Tower, I entrained on the Rocky Mountaineer for a two-day rail journey over the Rockies to Vancouver.

Two locomotives, or maybe three, hauled 23 cars with 690 passengers through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world.

Just a couple of negatives. In Canada, passenger trains give way to freight, so we spent a lot of time playing second fiddle to cargo. And my dream of sitting in a magnificent viewing car observing the mountain peaks through a dome of glass while sipping a series of free G&Ts did not come to fruition.
I should have read the literature more closely.

I was in the Red Leaf service and there were at least two classes above me – Silver Leaf and Gold Leaf. But we did get a complimentary glass of wine with lunch.

I was in Vancouver a few years ago and I found it as impressive as ever, except traffic had swollen exponentially, so after one night, my new host led me to a ferry which took us to Vancouver Island.

This is where Tim lives, with his wife and a Boston Terrier named Sid, in a beautiful house overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Tim runs a 32-ft motor cruiser, so I enjoyed sitting in the co-pilot’s seat with the nautical charts in my lap pretending I understood what the captain was up to.

He asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to do. I said that on Sunday I wanted to go to church in the morning and watch the World Cup final in a pub in the afternoon. And that’s what I did, we did. Great fun, except for one thing: The wrong team won.

* * *
An artist asked a gallery owner if there had been any interest in his paintings. The owner said, “Yes, a gentleman inquired whether your work would rise in value after your death and when I told him it would, he bought all 15 of your paintings.”

“Wonderful,” said the artist.

“Just one problem,” said the owner.

“What’s that?”

“The gentleman is your doctor.”

* * *

True story: A driver pulled into a car park and checked that his frisky Labrador puppy was settled on the back seat. As he walked away, he pointed his finger at the car and said, “Now you stay. Do you hear me? Stay!”

A lady driver looked puzzled. “Why don’t you just put the handbrake on?” she said.