Canadian Railroads > Update for the Ocean and Canadian

Regarding the Canadian, the availability of upper and lower berths has been removed from Reservia. These were not available on the "short-turn" Vancouver-Winnipeg trains which start on December 11th, but they were available on the full service planned to start in April.  The "short turn" trains 3 and 4 still show berths.

VIA has recently changed their advisory for the Ocean. The previous notice said bookings for December were "valid at this moment" and bookings were being accepted from January.

"Due to the uncertainty with the COVID situation, departures of the Montréal – Halifax route (The Ocean) in November and December 2020 have been cancelled and sales for departures in January and February, 2021 have been suspended. This measure will remain in place until such time as we have a better understanding of the services we will be able to offer. Existing reservations for departures in January and February 2021 remain valid at this moment."

 

DrawingroomA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> "Due to the uncertainty with the COVID situation,
> departures of the Montréal – Halifax route (The
> Ocean) in November and December 2020 have been
> cancelled and sales for departures in January and
> February, 2021 have been suspended. This measure
> will remain in place until such time as we have a
> better understanding of the services we will be
> able to offer. Existing reservations for
> departures in January and February 2021 remain
> valid at this moment."
>
>
I'd be surprised if the Ocean returned before the Quebec-New Brunswick border reopens and it certainly doesn't appear it will anytime soon. There are currently about 65 active Covid cases in all of the 'Atlantic Bubble'....New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland with a total pop of 2.5 million. With cases surging in other parts of the country...we feel fairly safe and certainly don't want to infringe on that by opening up the Bubble and that seems to be the general consensus here!
 

The Maritimes have been pretty good at controlling the pandemic from numbers I've been keeping tracking of and also hearing about. At one point there were no cases for a few weeks reported back in mid-summer. I've not heard a lot about how testing has been going, in terms of volume, but presume it has been pretty adequate? 

I wonder if VIA will actually resume the Canadian in  a few weeks, even though it is a significantly scaled-down operation. Manitoba is imposing more restrictions.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-bans-visitors-sale-of-non-essential-items-1.5808235

The premier of British Columbia was on television saying he does not want tourists coming to the province, although he is not intending to impose a "bubble" like Atlantic Canada has..

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-non-essential-travel-businesses-1.5807650