Journey on the Rocky Mountaineer with Michael Portillo
Michael Portillo’s journey through Canada takes him on one of the world’s most exciting train routes
Claire Webb - 12 January 2019
Michael Portillo fulfils a lifelong ambition and rides the Rocky Mountaineer in his series, Great Canadian Railroad Journeys. The train threads its way through the 3,000m-plus peaks that divide east and west Canada, and it didn’t disappoint. “The Canadian Rockies are sublime,” says Portillo, “and the line clings to the sides of gorges, burrows through mountains in tunnels, crosses wiry little bridges over immensely high chasms and it passes lakes that reflect the snowfall on the mountains. The weather adds to the drama of it all – the rain comes in, the cloud comes in, the sun comes out again.”
As for the train itself, Portillo likens it to a cruise ship. “It’s not really for transport, it’s for enjoyment, so there’s luxury on board: very high standards of service, beautiful food, lots of good wines, organised excursions.”
Portillo begins his journey in Vancouver, which is wedged between forested mountains and the sea on British Columbia’s west coast, and finishes in Canada’s oil capital, Calgary – which is famous for its enormous annual rodeo. The Rocky Mountaineer runs as far as Banff – a resort hemmed in by looming, snow-sprinkled peaks – on tracks that traverse the great Continental Divide of the Americas and played a key part in the country’s history.
“The line was vitally important to the unification of Canada,” Portillo explains. “British Columbia was only lured into the Canadian confederation by the promise of a railway. Before there was a railway, British Columbia in the west was weeks of travel away from Toronto and Ontario in the east. And so British Columbia looked like it was destined to link up to the western states of the United States, which of course the British didn’t want. The railway is what enabled Canada to be unified east to west.
“It was, of course, an extraordinarily difficult engineering feat. They tried to build it extremely quickly because they needed the revenue from opening the line to finance it. Thousands of people worked on the railway at any one time and many of them succumbed to accidents and cholera and all the other hazards of the day. Human life was considered rather cheap in those days. So when you’re on the train, you’re not only thinking about the engineering feat, you’re also thinking about the political importance.”
The line was constructed in just five years in the 1880s, allowing easy access to untouched summits that soon attracted British and American alpinists. In 1896, a fatal climbing accident led the Canadian Pacific Railway to start hiring Swiss mountain guides. They continued to do so for the next 50 years and there were no more deaths.
In Banff, Portillo meets a Swiss guide, who explains the allure for mountaineers from the Alps. “It’s interesting because we might think Switzerland is very beautiful and very remote, but this Swiss guide says that he left Switzerland because he regards it as very overcrowded and populated. It was always the Swiss habit to build villages and towns in the mountains, but there never were populations in the mountains in Canada. Indigenous people – First Nations people – moved through the mountains but they didn’t live in them, and therefore the greatest wildernesses to be found, possibly on Earth, are around Banff.
“Banff is a highly developed resort, but the guide told me that if I went walking with him for a few hours, I would be in pristine territory: places where hardly any human being ever sets foot, even today. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for people who really are bold and know what they’re doing.”
As for Portillo, he describes himself as “a fairly urban creature”; he’s not averse to a good walk but thinks camping is “going a bit far”. And that, of course, is the appeal of the Rocky Mountaineer: you can experience the wilds of Canada in comfort. “The train goes where nothing else goes. For most of the time, you don’t set eyes on a building or a road, so you are enjoying pristine nature.”
As for the train itself, Portillo likens it to a cruise ship. “It’s not really for transport, it’s for enjoyment, so there’s luxury on board: very high standards of service, beautiful food, lots of good wines, organised excursions.”
Portillo begins his journey in Vancouver, which is wedged between forested mountains and the sea on British Columbia’s west coast, and finishes in Canada’s oil capital, Calgary – which is famous for its enormous annual rodeo. The Rocky Mountaineer runs as far as Banff – a resort hemmed in by looming, snow-sprinkled peaks – on tracks that traverse the great Continental Divide of the Americas and played a key part in the country’s history.
“The line was vitally important to the unification of Canada,” Portillo explains. “British Columbia was only lured into the Canadian confederation by the promise of a railway. Before there was a railway, British Columbia in the west was weeks of travel away from Toronto and Ontario in the east. And so British Columbia looked like it was destined to link up to the western states of the United States, which of course the British didn’t want. The railway is what enabled Canada to be unified east to west.
“It was, of course, an extraordinarily difficult engineering feat. They tried to build it extremely quickly because they needed the revenue from opening the line to finance it. Thousands of people worked on the railway at any one time and many of them succumbed to accidents and cholera and all the other hazards of the day. Human life was considered rather cheap in those days. So when you’re on the train, you’re not only thinking about the engineering feat, you’re also thinking about the political importance.”
The line was constructed in just five years in the 1880s, allowing easy access to untouched summits that soon attracted British and American alpinists. In 1896, a fatal climbing accident led the Canadian Pacific Railway to start hiring Swiss mountain guides. They continued to do so for the next 50 years and there were no more deaths.
In Banff, Portillo meets a Swiss guide, who explains the allure for mountaineers from the Alps. “It’s interesting because we might think Switzerland is very beautiful and very remote, but this Swiss guide says that he left Switzerland because he regards it as very overcrowded and populated. It was always the Swiss habit to build villages and towns in the mountains, but there never were populations in the mountains in Canada. Indigenous people – First Nations people – moved through the mountains but they didn’t live in them, and therefore the greatest wildernesses to be found, possibly on Earth, are around Banff.
“Banff is a highly developed resort, but the guide told me that if I went walking with him for a few hours, I would be in pristine territory: places where hardly any human being ever sets foot, even today. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for people who really are bold and know what they’re doing.”
As for Portillo, he describes himself as “a fairly urban creature”; he’s not averse to a good walk but thinks camping is “going a bit far”. And that, of course, is the appeal of the Rocky Mountaineer: you can experience the wilds of Canada in comfort. “The train goes where nothing else goes. For most of the time, you don’t set eyes on a building or a road, so you are enjoying pristine nature.”