Canada Day by Train IV

It's time once again to celebrate Canada Day by sharing some photos of our great country from on or along the rails.  To help you enjoy these photos, I've added lyrics from that anthemic Woody Guthrie song "This Land is Your Land" written in 1940, Canadianized by the Travellers in 1955.  To make this experience multi-media, just click here to listen to the Canadian version, to accompany these photos a mari usque ad mare taken by yours truly, as well as by my brother as noted.  Turn your speaker volume up, scroll down and sing along!

As I went walking that ribbon of highway/I saw above me that endless skyway
Gas and grain at Conquest, Saskatchewan (above), CP 5912-5900-5676 hauling grain cars at 50 mph along Highway 18 between Bienfait and Frobisher, Saskatchewan in 1989 (D.J. Gagnon photo, below):

I saw below me that golden valley/This land was made for you and me

Morning grazing at Endako, British Columbia:

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling/and the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

Roadside in Glenside, Saskatchewan taken in 1986:

As the fog was lifting, a voice was chanting/This land was made for you and me

Misty morning at Mileage 48 on CP's Heron Bay Sub, VIA Park car view:

This land is your land/this land is my land/from Bonavista to Vancouver Island/from the Arctic Circle to the Great Lakes waters/this land was made for you and me.

Stopped streamside at Sockeye, British Columbia, waiting for a ballast train's derailed caboose to be rerailed at Tyee, Mileage 68 of CN's Skeena Sub, aboard VIA's Skeena east out of Prince Rupert, 1986:

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps/to the fir-clad forests of our mighty mountains

Mountains that are both snow-clad and fir-clad dwarf VIA No 1's  rainbow consist near Banff, Alberta in October, 1980:

And all around me a voice was calling/This land was made for you and me

This land is your land/this land is my land/from Bonavista

CN NF210 915 kicking cars hard at Corner Brook, Newfoundland, 1988 (D.J. Gagnon photo):

to Vancouver Island

CP Hotels' Empress in Victoria, British Columbia, 1980:

From the Arctic Circle 

Slightly south of that, but still fairly far north, National Harbours Board terminal elevator at Churchill, Manitoba, 1987 (D.J. Gagnon photo):

To the Great Lakes waters/This land was made for you and me.

Two ribbons of steel skirt Lake Superior on CP's mainline east of Firehill, Ontario:

Happy Canada Day! Bonne Fete Canada!

Running extra...

The Patient Canadian: CBC News reports that Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia held its annual Moose Draw (not Moose Jaw as in Saskatchewan) at which unlucky but undaunted hunters show up annually, some for up to thirty years, waiting for a chance to bag a moose.  You'll never see an uglier, more majestic creature.

The Accented Canadian: CBC's Colleen Jones reported courtside at an Olympics volleyball match "that if the Fijian team brought home a medal, each team member would be given a hooose and a cayre" translation: a house and a car.  Inspirational talk; chances of Fiji becoming a volleyball dynasty were likely poor.

The Decorated Canadian: Major David Currie of the South Alberta Regiment supervises the surrender of once-invincible German troops at St-Lambert-sur-Dives, France on August 19, 1944.  This photo of Currie  "shown at left with pistol in hand...closest anyone has ever come to photographing a man winning the Victoria Cross" gives way to this photo, less often seen, of the now-prisoners heading to captivity. Both photos are studies in faces and postures, of brave audacity and shameless surrender, of victory and defeat.