hello from 'central canada'

On this train ride from Toronto to Ottawa, the uniformity of the scenery is a thing of awe. Flat or very faintly undulating land covered with grass and small broadleaf trees. Here and there a patch of suburban sprawl, but scarcely a town, as the line seems to skirt all the major cities it serves. Now and then a wetland. Summer now, so all green, but it’s surprisingly easy to translate the scene to fall or winter with not much more than a laying-on of a color filter. I’ve ridden for four hours, and seen nothing that makes sense as a sequence.  Trees, field, marsh, town, marsh, field, marsh.  The order seems random, without even the hint of narrative to tantalize the attention.

So much of what Canada has meant to me is what British Columbia has meant.  A city and wilderness right there in each other’s faces. The wilderness not reduced to a postcard, but pressing back with bears, cougars, weather, and sheer obstruction. The enforced languor of bi-hourly ferries in landscapes too steep for the most precipitous roads. The narrow perch of the Sea-to-Sky Highway above the unfathomable fathoms of Howe Sound, now being widened for the Olympics – a widening that will make it feel even more narrow. Small towns stuck in crevices, not to say crevasses, hanging on by not looking up, or down.

Ontario is so perfectly different that the idea of Canada makes sense only as the difference itself, the dissonance between landscapes that precedes even the clash of linguistic solitudes. In Ontario I have seen nothing but human work. Every tree seems adapted to a settled landscape, such as the environs of a rail line. Even without the blasting extremes of weather, it’s a landscape that naturally sends one indoors, to do the work that drives an economy and a culture. 

Just now, I looked up to see a small town, historic fragments, a few old storefronts facing an empty parking lot by the rails.  Weeds wherever there's nothing else.  Like this:

A couple of people, looking at the train, seeming to think nothing, say nothing, be nothing. I could be anywhere.  Perhaps I am.  Perhaps that's Canada's secret.

Comments

[Brenda]

Yes, you've got it. The landscape. I lived in Vancouver for 2 years recently, but came back to Toronto. As stunningly beautiful as it is, it wasn't my city; this is. While Ontario is scrubby and uninteresting, there is a stability to the land that I didn't find on the West coast, which always felt like it was floating on sea water. I attribute it to the Canadian Shield underlying this part of the continent. It's why the soil is not as deep or rich (except in the Holland Marsh) and why the vegetation is not as magnificent, too...

Beautiful, poetic post! Love the description of the interface between city and wilderness, and the mountains...