Canadian Railroads > VIA Rail and Remembrance Day

DrawingroomA recently reported on his travels on the Canadian that left Vancouver on Friday 11/15. My other half and I rode the Canadian that left Vancouver a week earlier on 11/8, and I will post a report shortly as well. At some point it occurred to me that we would be on the train on 11/11. I had heard that Canadian railroads (at least the Canadian Pacific) commemorated Remembrance Day by stopping trains and blowing the horn at 11am. Thus I was curious about what VIA might do. 

I discovered VIA does commemorate the day as well. On the morning of the 11th, poppies were made available to passengers in the dining car. Shortly before 11am a member of the crew announced over the PA that is was Remembrance Day, read John McCrae's famous poem "In Flanders Field", and asked for a moment of silence. About 10:55am we made a station stop at Collins ( I believe) and waited a few minutes until 11am at which point the locomotive sounded a single long horn blast. It was mentioned to me afterwards that had we not been at the station, we would have come to short stop at 11am.

As a side note, we spent a few days in Vancouver prior to boarding the train and I noticed that the Vancouver transit system also paid attention to Remembrance Day as evidenced in the following photo

My admiration to VIA (and Canadians in general) for remembering our collective history in a thoughtful and dignified manner

WP17

 

---

Same message on a watch given by the troops to John Wayne in one of his calvary movies.