Check Out This Classic Canadian Rock & Roll Band
On November 21, 2011, SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) presents Wealthy Dodson, Ronnie King and Kim Berly, iconic Canadian rock band The Stampeders, with a Lifetime Achievement Award at Toronto’s Roy Thompson Hall. The honour will be as significantly for what these road warriors continues to do these days, as a loved ones, as for what they’ve completed since the sixties. Certainly The Stampeders released Sweet City Lady 40 many years ago, and in reality cut their first record much earlier, in 1965.
Now it really is all about loved ones entertaining diehard fans – males now grey or bald, females who shed their Laura Ashleys decades ago – and their children and grandchildren. The “mature” yet nevertheless artistically agile, wonderfully harmonious and often entertaining classic Canadian rockers now take their own households on the road, the days of fending off groupies lengthy past.
When they initial formed as a nearby, western Canada rock & roll band, The Stampeders wore blue jeans and cowboy hats. In 1968 band members moved from Calgary to Toronto, shedding their western garb. The doors to the planet stage would soon open. By year’s finish modifications in personnel resulted in The Stampeders becoming a nicely – honed trio of rockers. The identical 3 musicians, the winning formula of Wealthy, Ronnie and Kim would quickly make rock & roll history by being 1 of the very first Canadian bands to break onto the international scene.
The 1971 release of Sweet City Woman transformed the lives of the band members forever. Their signature tune reached Billboard Top 10. Canadian music and songwriting awards would mount. International focus lead to The Stampeders touring the UK, Brazil, and of course the US, with performances such as “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” and “Whisky A-Go-Go.” The band played to reside concerts of up to 30,000.
Although no tune garnered the worldwide acclaim of Sweet City Lady, other songs received healthful airtime in the US, Mexico and South American, and Europe. The band continued to ride the wave of achievement with songs such as its special rendition of Hit The Road Jack, its earlier southern rock tune Carry Me, and arguably their greatest hard rock & roll amount, the fiery Wild Eyes. Popularity was also afforded sweet ballads sung by Kim Berly such as Oh My Lady and Minstrel Gypsy.
Recording offers transformed from the late 1960s and by means of a lot of the 1970s. In 1977 personnel as soon as once again struggled, top to the band’s breakup ahead of the finish of the decade.
In 1992, The Stampeders’ core reunited as a Canadian touring band, the triumvirate launching its rejuvenated career playing exactly where else, but the Calgary Stampede. The group later recorded its first album in virtually 20 many years.
Dodson, King and Berly have continued to tour frequently because 1992, drawing sold-out crowds in a huge range of venues which includes casinos, concert halls, regional fairs and dinner theatres throughout virtually all of Canada.
On a picture excellent Sunday autumn afternoon in late September, band members sit in their dressing space. The Stampeders are waiting to perform just outdoors Ottawa at the Carp Fall Fair. There’s a powerful family presence. Ronnie’s 13-year-old daughter Zoe has been with her dad for the previous couple of days. They attended a wedding in Montreal, and have driven to Carp this Sunday morning. Zoe would like to catch a swift glimpse of the fairgrounds. Ronnie delivers her some money, telling her, “Take it Zoe, why else do you feel I am functioning,” his voice cracking with emotion.
Wealthy has arrived from Toronto with wife Mary-Lynn. She leaves the dressing area to set up merchandise tables beside the stage. Their daughter Holly, also a talented musician, has come along for the display. She also is anxious to look around outside.
Kim and his companion Lori now live in British Columbia. Kim flew to Toronto to start the 5 city tour, having to pay a visit to his daughter in Orangeville prior to driving to Carp. Lori’s daughter Danica has driven to Carp from school in Brockville to again be portion of The Stampeders entourage. She joins the two other girls for a pre-concert stroll.
Members of the traditional Canadian rock band are each and every effectively into their sixties. Ronnie’s a great grandfather. Nevertheless the group performs to a packed crowd for close to two hrs like encore, with out so much as a quick break.
Couples and singles of all ages and both sexes are dancing along the perimeter of the arena and in front of the stage. A woman is bopping with her two youngsters a la Woodstock or are they her grandchildren? The band plays their greatest hits and then some, efficiently its reside, double CD. Even Zoe, Holly, Danica and Mary-Lynn are generating beat to the tunes. Ronnie reminisces when toddler Zoe would dance on stage.
The Stampeders return for a lengthy encore. Throngs rush the stage to watch, listen, hope for a hand shake or peck on the cheek. Following the conclusion a sixtyish woman with youthful kid in toe asks, “please, Ronnie dropped his select and I just can’t reach far sufficient onto the stage to get it I’ve been collecting picks because 1973 could you get it for me?”
Mary-Lynn and the 3 daughters are undertaking a brisk business promoting CDs, a band history on DVD, posters and t-shirts. Several hover, awaiting the return of Wealthy, Ronnie and Kim to autograph new purchases as properly as fans’ vintage 45s, LPs and books chronicling the history of Canadian rock & roll, of course such as photo spreads of The Stampeders – still in blue jeans and cowboy hats.
For The Stampeders it’s an honour to carry out for not only loyal fans (and their progeny), but also old friends who drop by including members of other historic Canadian rock bands and the radio personalities who modified their lives. With the utmost sincerity the band feels privileged to have the opportunity to perform for their own families and make them portion of the knowledge of reside rock & roll.
Up coming morning the households leave the Ottawa Valley in separate cars. Ahead of heading out Ronnie drives Zoe to the Ottawa airport so she can get back to hometown Calgary for Monday afternoon’s classes. Danica drives back to college in Brockville. The band heads for Toronto for the subsequent performance in Mississagua.
Mary-Lynn and Holly accompany Wealthy to the Stage West Mississauga dinner theatre venue. Kim smiles at the finish of this 2nd gig of the concert tour, almost embarrassingly admitting, “yes, it is really a good way to make a living this way, following all these many years look at our families, the really like and the appreciation which surrounds us.”
The 5000 Canadian Tour Championship brings down the curtain on the 2008 season this week just south of Barrie this week. Not only is this the richest occasion on the schedule, but several awards will be handed out at the close of play on Sunday afternoon. The winner of the 2008 Rolex Player of the Year will be announced as will the winners of the Canadian Bursary in both the Canadian and International division. The Canadian Bursary is a pool of funds designed to help Canadian Tour members in their quest to play the PGA TOUR. Those finishing in the leading 5 of each and every division will receive payouts from the fund. Following Sundays final round, the prime two finishers on the Order of Merit will obtain exemptions into the second stage of PGA TOUR Qualifying School. www.cantour.com
Video Rating: 5 / five
Question by wooden: Does Miley Cyrus ever do Canadian tours?
If she does why do I in no way uncover out about it? How come she often does American tours its genuinely not fair..
Will she have any tour dates in Canada for 2009 or early 2010?
Thanks!!
Very best solution:
Answer by sunshine25
I don’t see Canada on her schedule for the rest of this year. Really likely she’ll tour there in early 2010. Be patient, she’s coming. Some ticket websites will alert you when she’s coming, so sign up.
Add your very own solution in the comments!
My Favorite Tips and Guide Ideas to the Yukon in Canada
1. Yukon
The Yukon, the vast, rugged, thinly populated expanse of land located above the 60th parallel in northwestern Canada which shares its border with Alaska and accurately earns its self-proclaimed slogan of “larger than life,” is a topographically diverse, serenely beautiful, and intoxicatingly attractive territory of barren, treeless plains, boreal forests, rugged mountains, glaciers, and mirror-reflective lakes and rivers inhabited by Canada’s First Nations people and abundant wildlife. Because of its high latitude, it experiences more than 20 hours of daylight in the summer, but fewer than five in the winter, replaced, instead, by the northern lights known as the “aurora borealis.” Aside from the major “cities,” most communities are only accessible by floatplane or dogsled.
The Yukon’s history is, in essence, that of the Gold Rush. Sparked by the August 16, 1896 discovery of a gold nugget in northwestern Canada at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers, it began when some 100,000, seeking wealth and adventure, set off on what had later been designated the Klondike Gold Rush Trail between 1897 and 1898. The event, which produced an instantaneous population boom and ultimately shaped the territory, traces its path to five significant locations in both the United States and Canada.
The first of these, Seattle, Washington, had served as the gateway to the Yukon. Advertised as the “outfitter of the gold fields,” it sold supplies and gear stocked ten feet deep on storefront boardwalks, grossing million in sales by early-1898, and was the launching point for the all-water route through the Gulf of Alaska to St. Michael, and then down the Yukon River to Dawson City. Despite the high fares, which few could afford, all passages had been sold out.
Dyea and its Chilkoot Trail, the second location, had provided a slower, more treacherous, alternate route, via the 33-mile Chilkoot trail which linked tidewater Alaska with the Canadian headwaters of the Yukon River.
Skagway, Alaska, the third location, quickly replaced Dyea as the “Gateway to the Klondike” because of its more navigable White Pass route which, although ten miles longer than that of the Chilkoot Trail, had entailed a 600-foot-lower climb. The trail, quickly destroyed because of overuse, had ultimately been replaced by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad whose construction, financed by British investors, had commenced in May of 1898 and had extended to the White Pass Summit by February of 1899, Bennett Lake by July of 1899, and Whitehorse by July of the following year. Skagway itself had been metamorphosed from a cleared, tent-dotted field to boardwalk-lined streets sporting wooden buildings with 80 saloons in the four-month period between August and December 1897.
At Bennett Lake, the fourth location, 30,000 stampeders awaited the spring thaw, constructing 7,124 boats from whipsawn green lumber and launching their flotilla on May 29, 1898, fighting the Whitehorse rapids before following the Yukon River to Dawson City.
Dawson City itself, the fifth location, had been the site of the first gold nugget discovery and had begun as a small island between the Yukon and Klondike Rivers hitherto only occupied by the Han First Nations people, but exploded into Canada’s largest city west of Winnipeg and north of Vancouver with up to 40,000 gold seekers covering a ten-mile area along the river banks. Thirty cords of firewood were used to burn shafts through the permafrost to the mines themselves. Of the 4,000 who actually discovered gold, only a few hundred ultimately emerged “rich.”
2. Whitehorse
Whitehorse, the Yukon’s wilderness capital on the banks of the Yukon River with a population of 23,000, had itself been shaped by the gold rush and the transportation means which developed to facilitate it. Named for the rapids on the Yukon River, which resembled the flowing manes of charging white horses, the area had first served as a fishing encampment of the Kwanlin Dun First Nations people. In 1987, the tent-comprised Canyon City served as the operational base of a horse-drawn tramway which, for a fee, carried people and goods, particularly gold rushers, round the treacherous White Horse Rapids on log rails.
Three years later, in 1900, the tracks of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad reached the city, today the only international narrow gauge railroad still operating in North America, and passengers transferred to the extensive riverboat service, which completed the journey to Dawson City by the Yukon River.
In 1942, the US Army completed the 1,534-mile Alaska Highway in a record eight months, 23 days, and Whitehorse had been incorporated as a city in 1950. Three years later, it replaced Dawson as the capital of the Yukon.
Whitehorse itself is accessible by multiple travel modes. The paved Alaska, Haines, and Klondike Highways provide road access within the territory and to Alaska, while the gravel Dempster Highway connects Dawson City with Inuvik above the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories. The Alaska Marine Highway and multiple, daily cruise ships serve Skagway and Haines, Alaska, during the summer season. The White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad connects Skagway with Fraser and Bennett Lake, British Columbia, with service soon to be extended to Whitehorse. And the Whitehorse airport offers daily service, via Air North, Air Canada Jazz, First Air, and Condor, to Yellowknife, Dawson, Fairbanks, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Frankfurt, Germany. Floatplanes provide remote community access.
The story of Whitehorse can be traced by its many diverse sights and attractions.
The MacBride Museum, for instance, toted as “Yukon’s first museum” and housed in a log structure with a sod roof, had been established in 1951 by historian Bill MacBride in order to explore the Yukon’s history. It features stuffed wildlife in its upper gallery; “Rivers of Gold,” an exhibit depicting Yukon prospecting and placer mining since 1883, and Yukon’s First Nations people, in its lower gallery; and early copper mining equipment, blacksmithing, and Sam McGee’s original, 1899 cabin in one of two outside exhibition areas. The other contains overland stages used by the White Pass and Yukon Route between Whitehorse and Dawson, an 1895 Northwest Mounted Police Patrol cabin, and Engine number 51, built in 1881 and used on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad seven years later in 1898.
The Old Log Church Museum, an Anglican cathedral built in 1900, is one of the oldest buildings in Whitehorse and tells the story of the early Yukon missionaries, including that of the priest who survived a winter expedition by eating his own boots for sustenance.
Perhaps the most popular sight, and one which serves as the very city symbol, is the S. S. Klondike, a National Historical Site of Canada. The largest of the 250 sternwheelers to have plied the Yukon River at 64 meters long and 12.5 meters wide, it had been constructed in 1920 by the British Yukon Navigation Company, a subsidiary of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad, in the city of Whitehorse itself, and had been an integral part of the inland water transportation system which connected Whitehorse with the remainder of the territory and hence served as the principle element of its own growth.
The design, which traced its lineage as far back as 1866 when the first such steam-powered riverboat reached Selkirk, the S. S. Klondike I, with a 1,362.5-ton gross weight and powered by two 525-hp compound jet-condenser engines, had featured a revolutionary hull which enabled it to offer 50 percent more cargo volume than previous configurations without sacrificing shallow draft instability, enabling it to accommodate more than 300-ton loads for the first time, along with 75 first and second class passengers. Of its three decks, the first, or main, deck housed the engines, boilers, and cargo; the second the lounge, communications office, dining room, galley, and sun deck; and the third the bridge and the crew quarters.
Succeeded by the dimensionally identical Klondike II after the initial vessel ran aground in 1936, itself completing the 460-mile downstream run from Whitehorse to Dawson in 36 hours with only one or two wood-replenishing stops, it had been operated as a cargo boat between 1937 and 1952 and had ultimately been converted into a small cruise ship for service until 1955.
The current dry-docked boat appears in its 1930 guise.
The Whitehorse Train Depot, which replaced the originally constructed, but later fire- consumed structure, reflects the typical western Canadian architecture of the early 20th century, although alterations had been made during World War II and during the Alaska Highway project. After scheduled railway service had been discontinued in 1982, the Yukon government had purchased the building and restored it, its passenger waiting room now reflecting its 1950s heritage.
The Whitehorse Waterfront trolley, using the narrow-gauge White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad tracks and paralleling the Yukon River with stops at Rotary Peace Park, the Tourist Information Center, the White Pass Train Depot, Wood Street, Shipyard’s Park and Kishwoot Station, and Spook Creek, provides an excellent introduction to the city, using a single trolley car, number 531, for its hourly round-trip service.
The car itself, in its original yellow color scheme, had been partially built by the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia in 1925 for the Lisbon Electric Company which subsequently assembled the kit in its Santo Amaro shop. Of the 202 cars constructed there, 24 had been of the car 531 type.
Trolley 531 had operated in Lisbon until 1976, at which time it had been acquired for the Lake Superior Museum of Transportation in Duluth, Minnesota, where it remained until the Yukon government had purchased it in 1999. Flatbed truck transport, through bitter cold and ice, enabled it to reach the White Pass and Yukon Route engine restoration shed in Whitehorse on January 6, 2000.
The double-ended tram car, with controls at either end, has two 25-hp General Electric motors and two k.3 controllers, and had been intended to operate off of overhead electrical lines with a power pole, but the lack of such facilities in Whitehorse necessitated the temporary provision of a trailer-installed electrical generator. The present 600-volt operation replaces its originally intended 550-volt current, and the installation of railroad wheels permits it to run on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad’s 36-inch tracks, although it had been designed, with its original trolley wheel base, to utilize the narrower, 34.5-inch rail width.
Because of the equally standard-gauge body, it permits four-abreast, two-two, seating, sporting a varnished hardwood oak, mahogany, and cherry interior with original signs still in Portuguese.
The Whitehorse Rapids Fish Ladder and Hatchery, located five minutes out of town, had resulted from the late-1950s construction of the Whitehorse Rapids Hydroelectric Facility by the Northern Canada Power Commission. The Alaska and Klondike Highways, linking many communities and obviating the need for the then-vital sternwheeler river transportation system, ultimately led to the transfer of the Yukon’s capital from Dawson to Whitehorse, and its population expansion could no longer be supported by the downtown diesel generator electricity method. Construction of the greater-capacity hydroelectric dam, commencing in 1956, formed Schwatka Lake, and this produced the city’s first electricity two years later, in 1958.
Although the facility improved the quality of life for the human population, it proved the detriment to the salmon species in the river. Salmon had traveled up the Yukon River to spawn for thousands of years, laying their eggs in gravel which, after the winter gestation period, hatched into alevins in early-spring, and fed and developed in the cold, clear waters for up to two years. Swimming out to the ocean, they returned several years later to the exact location of their births to lay their own eggs and begin the process anew.
In order to circumvent the new hydroelectric dam and permit them to continue their life cycles, the world’s longest wooden fish ladder, at 366 meters, had been built in 1959. Progressively rising in steps by 15 meters from the Yukon River to Schwatka Lake, it enables salmon to safely pass round the dam and continue their migration process.
A two-hour boat cruise on Schwatka Lake by the appropriately-named m/v Schwatka, a 28-ton, dual-decked, 40-passenger boat, provides an excellent introduction to Whitehorse’s wilderness side and sails through Miles Canyon, the turbulent “Devil’s Punchbowl,” and the Yukon River itself.
Several interesting attractions are located along the Alaska Highway, up Two Mile Hill Road.
The Copperbelt Mining Railway and Museum, the first of these, provides a 1.8-kilometer figure-eight loop from its red McIntyre Station building through the skinny spruce forest, using an abandoned spur line of the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad located in the historic Whitehorse Copper Belt mining district. Its two engines, 10- and 20-hp Loke diesels, were manufactured by the Jenacher Werks in Austria in 1969 and 1967, respectively.
The Yukon Transportation Museum depicts the territory’s Gold Rush transportation heritage, displaying unusual travel modes associated with the north, from the snowshoe to the dogsled to the airplane. Exhibits include a Canadian Pacific DC-3 mounted on an outside pedestal; a full-size riverboat, the “Neecheah,” and a steam locomotive. Inside exhibits include a gasoline-powered Casey car, which transported workers on the rails; a passenger car used by the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad; a White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad model train layout; a Ryan B-1 Bougham designated “Queen of the Yukon,” a sister ship to Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis,” which served as the first commercial airplane to have operated in the Yukon after its purchase from the San Diego factory by Yukon Airways and Exploration, Ltd., in 1927 for ,200.00; dog sleds; a 1927 Chevrolet convertible; a five-cylinder Kinner engine; a Lycoming R-680 engine; a 1965 International Travelall ambulance; a welded steel frame from a Fairchild FC-2W2; a Smith DGA-1 “Miniplane” homebuild; a bus from the B.Y.N. Bus Lines; military vehicles, including a seven-passenger Dodge Carryall used by the US Army’s Northwest Service Command during construction of the Alcan Highway; and a log rail tramway which used parallel logs as “tracks.”
The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center examines Beringia, a sub-continent of the last Ice Age which had been located in the Bering Strait and had encompassed Siberia, Alaska, and the Yukon. Although the remainder of Canada had laid under massive ice sheets, Beringia itself had been untouched by glaciers because of the 125-meter reduction in sea levels, producing tundra whose tough, dry grasses had supported a wide range of herbivores and carnivores.
The woolly mammoth, among them, had been the predecessor to the modern Asiatic elephant and the museum sports a full-size cast of the largest example ever recovered. The short-faced bear, which had been one foot taller than today’s grizzly counterpart, had been the largest, most powerful land carnivore in North America during the last Ice Age. The museum also features a reconstruction of the 24,000-year-old Bluefish Cave archaeological site.
The earliest human inhabitants, following bison and mammoth herds 24,000 years ago, had migrated from western Beringia to current Canada.
3. Kluane National Park
One of four contiguous national and provincial parks, inclusive of the Yukon’s 21,980 square-kilometer Kluane National Park, Alaska’s 52,600 square-kilometer Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Alaska’s 13,360 square-kilometer Glacier Bay National Park, and British Columbia’s 9,580 square-kilometer Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, Kluane National Park itself is topographically diverse, encompassing massive mountains, valleys, lakes, boreal forests, valley glaciers, and ice fields. Of the two mountain ranges—the Kluane and Icefield—the latter sports Canada’s highest peak, Mount Logan, at 19,545 feet. The largest non-polar ice field in the world, a remnant of the last Ice Age, is also located here.
Of the two types of populations—human and animal—the former includes the Southern Tutchone people, who had previously lived a nomadic lifestyle, but continue to practice a culture which closely revolves round the natural world, and the latter includes grizzly bears, lynx, mountain goats, moose, wolves, black bears, caribou, coyotes, 180 species of birds, and the world’s largest concentration of dall sheep.
Haines Junction, which is located two hours from Whitehorse via the Alaska Highway and serves as the national park’s base, is a year-round, full-service village whose modern history began in 1942 with the completion of the Alaska Highway itself at Milepost 1016. A year later, a branch road, over the Chilkat Pass, connected it with Haines, Alaska, and Kluane National Park had been designated a preserve in 1972.
Its few sights, always flanked by the breathtaking, purple-hued St. Elias Mountains, include the Village Monument, a local wildlife sculpture; the eight-sided log St. Christopher’’s Anglican Church; and the Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church, which had been constructed in 1954 from an old army Quonset hut remaining from the Alaska Highway project.
The ubiquitous slender, dark green spruce, encountered during my own tour of the national park, lined either side of the deserted Haines Highway, the vertical ridges of the St. Elias Mountains of Kluane National Park on the right side hues of purple, chocolate brown, and velvet-green at their bases. The silver surface of Kathleen Lake reflected between them.
Kluane National Park and the adjacent Wrangell-St. Elias National monument across the border in the United States had been jointly nominated to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979. Together, the properties present an unbroken, pristine natural system, with a rich variety of vegetation, patterns, and ecosystems.
The first stop of my own drive revealed a pebble beach, which, acting like a threshold, led toward the emerald green water of Kathleen Lake, bracketed on either side by tall, silent, fragrant spruce, the water itself interfacing with the green-carpeted mountain on the far side in seamless transition, taking the eye up to the brown, vegetationless top, from which a slender “s” of snow still snaked, a remainder of the long winter and short summer “pause” between the next frigid cycle. Since it had been August, that beginning had not been very far way in these northern latitudes.
The Kokanee salmon, living in the fresh water lake for the first three years of its life, swims the short distance to Sockeye Lake in the fourth year, at which time it dies. In the 1700s, the Lowell Glacier had surged across the Alaska River, blocking its drainage into the Pacific Ocean and thus creating an enormous lake. When the dam suddenly burst in 1856, the waters had been released in torrential floods, draining the basin.
Kluane National Park sports both glaciers of ice and rock, the latter formed in cold, alpine environments on mountain slopes. During the last 8,000 years, brittle bedrock shattered into fragments by the freezing and thawing action of the winter-summer cycle. Lubricated by meltwater and riding a core of glacial ice, a continually accumulating mass of rock slowly ground its way down the mountainside, forming rock glaciers.
The huge, deep blue of Dezadeash Lake, encountered at another stop, had been surrounded by considerably-distanced mountains, whose soft-curved, inverted bowl-like peaks had been reduced to gray and green, almost indistinguishable silhouettes in the early-afternoon beneath the high, unobstructed, gleaming sun. The sky had been a flawless blue.
Klukshu Village, dotted with tiny log cabins and a gift shop, had been an important place for many Champagne and Aishihik families, particularly during salmon-spawning season between June and September when king, sockeye, and coho salmon migrate up the river.
4. Conclusion
The Yukon, with its capital city of Whitehorse and wilderness Kluane National Park, indeed provides an interesting journey through its Gold Rush legacy and the transportation means which had developed to facilitate it.
Take an incredible journey by train across Western Canada with VIA Rail. See wildlife and mountain vistas on this rail tour from Edmonton to Jasper Alberta. See more episodes about Canadian Rockies train trips and VIA Rail tours in HD at www.vacationscanada.tv There’s no better way to see the Canadian Rockies than by train.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Question by bevrossg: What is the best Canadian train tour?
What is the best vacation train tour of the Canadian mountains. Do any trains have you sleep on the train?
Best answer:
Answer by hoddo
joke
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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Wow – Something You Just Gotta Try – The Naugatuck Railroad
A quintessential, lower-New England town, Thomaston, Connecticut, was characterized by its Saint Thomas and First Methodist churches; its single, wind-swept, leave-blanketed Main Street; and the carved, jack-o-lantern faces peering out of the windows of its 19th-century buildings on a blue, but temperature-nipping Halloween weekend.
The red brick Thomaston Station, flanked by small hills whose increasingly thread-bare trees had relinquished their colorful leaves to autumn’s wind, had been fed by a single main track and was located next to the sprawling, equally red-bricked, but now closed Plume and Atwood Brass Mill. They both had a story to tell. Like the life-representing leaves released to history and relegated to memory, the location exuded a rich past, which I eagerly listened to as I awaited the Naugatuck Railroad’s 2:00 p.m. departure. Paradoxically, the silence was the loudest speaker.
Originally part of the Farmington Proprietor’s 1684 purchase of Mattatuck Plantation, Thomaston itself had achieved independence in 1739 as the “Northbury Parish,” uniting with the Waterbury Parish in 1780 to form Watertown, but separating almost as quickly and becoming “Plymouth Hollow.”
Seth Thomas, of timepiece fame, settled in the village in 1813. Expansion intermittently earned it the unofficial name of “Thomas Town” until it was permanently changed to the present “Thomaston” in 1875 to honor the very man who had largely been responsible for its existence.
His factories, now numbering many, churned out watches and mantel and tower clocks, and he was responsible for the Naugatuck Railroad’s routing through town in order for him to be able to link it with the ever-expanding brass center in Waterbury.
Chartered in 1845, the Naugatuck Railroad itself was created to connect Bridgeport in the south with Winsted in the north on Naugatuck River-paralleling track, its initial construction commencing three years later, in April, with service from the just-completed New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad junction to Seymour subsequently inaugurated on May 15, 1849. Extensions to Waterbury followed on June 11 and Winsted on September 24.
The former line, simply designated the “New Haven,” carried more passengers than freight on a route system which, at its peak, encompassed most of New England, stretching from New York to Providence and Boston, and it eventually acquired several other, smaller companies, including the Maine Central and the Boston and Maine. The Naugatuck Railroad was one of them. Initially leasing it on May 24, 1887, it altogether absorbed it 19 years later, in 1906, but passenger service was discontinued on more than half the line, from Waterbury to Torrington and Winsted, in 1958, and five years later the track was completely abandoned between these two cities.
Because of the weakening New England industrial base during the 1960s, which reduced demand for rail services, the New Haven Railroad was forced into a merger with Penn Central in 1969, but further deterioration, due to freight customer loss and track disrepair, resulted in its own bankruptcy. The line north of Waterbury had, by this time, been renamed “Torrington Secondary Track,” after its destination.
Incorporated into the government-created and –sponsored Conrail, the former Penn Central had operated the Waterbury Branch until the Connecticut Department of Transportation had purchased the line between Devon and Torrington in 1982, leasing the track to the Boston and Maine Railroad for its own freight service north of Waterbury. Victim, like so many previous operators, to declining demand and revenue, it discontinued operations in 1995, after it itself had become part of the Guilford Rail System.
On June 7 of that year, the Railroad Museum of New England obtained a state charter for a wholly-owned operating subsidiary designated “Naugatuck Railroad” after the original, 1845 enterprise, leasing track from the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
Outlining its mission, it states, “the Railroad Museum of New England, Inc., is a not-for-profit educational and historical organization founded in January 1968. Its mission is to establish an interpretive facility where the story of the region’s railroad heritage can be effectively told. We have an extensive collection of New England rolling stock, including locomotives of all types, passenger cars, freight cars, and cabooses. We have New England railroad artifacts dating from the 1840s to the present—everything from tickets to signal towers.”
Its Naugatuck Railroad subsidiary, having turned its first wheel in September of 1996, operates historic excursion trains from Thomaston to Waterville throughout the year, including a myriad of seasonal- and holiday-appropriate rides and periodic steam engine runs.
Center of its activities is the Thomaston Station. Replacing the original, smaller, wooden depot located on the other side of the track, the 2,424-square-foot, wooden frame and brick building, with interior plaster walls and ceilings, had been constructed in 1881 by the first Naugatuck Railroad and currently occupies a 1.11-acre site on East Main Street.
After the last passenger train had departed in 1958, it had been used for several purposes: as a freight agent’s office until 1968, as a storage location for the Plume and Atwood Brass Mill, and as a small engine repair shop in the early 1990s. But a vandal-set fire in 1993, spreading from an inside corner and raging up the attic stairs, destroyed the roof.
Monetary donations from the Thomaston Savings Bank permitted roof, chimney, and upper masonry repairs to commence in 1997, followed by interior cleaning, and the installation of a ticket window, gift shop counter, and exhibit panels took place two years later, while a second grant, made in 2001, enabled a new canopy deck to be installed and the original platform canopies to be restored.
A 600-foot-long display track, located behind the building, had been lowered and reconstructed, and today cradled a stationary freight train “pulled” by New Haven diesel locomotives 6690 and 6691, which were attached to a collection of box and tank cars and the prerequisite red caboose numbered C-507. Posing on the spur line, it stood across from the station’s “Baggage Room” door.
The depot, to serve as the cornerstone of an ultimate, 1950s, working railroad station, will be joined by an extended, paved, and lighted platform; an operating control tower; hand-operated crossing gates; a crossing tender’s shanty; a mail crane; a water shed for steam engine servicing; and a hand-operated freight derrick.
The earlier, 1200 noon run, a three-coach collection pulled by diesel locomotive 2203 which somehow reflected the season with its orange and brown livery, screeched to a stop in front of the station at 1330 beneath a gray ceiling and deposited a menagerie of Halloween-costumed kids who promptly stormed the depot door to collect their pumpkins.
Replenished with a second, considerably-costumed group, the train vocally assaulted the silence with its high-shrilled whistle and released its brakes, inching past the station building and the side track-supported freight train as soon as its car couplings had tensed into weight-pulling movement, plunging into the autumnal forest in a southerly direction.
The hills sprouted bursts of burnt orange, glowing gold, auburn, and brown. Protestingly screeching as its wheels adhered to the track’s curves, the short chain of vintage coaches paralleled the almost-black reflective surface of the Naugatuck River, which was periodically highlighted by tiny, silver-sizzled rapids.
Carving out the valley of the same name, the waterway, the largest in Connecticut and a sub-basin of the Housatonic River, spans 39 miles from Norfolk to Derby, passing through the two counties of New Haven and Litchfield and 12 towns in the process. Originally used by the American Indians for sustenance and subsequently serving the English after their own settlement along it, it had facilitated post-Industrial Revolution production in the form of hydropower. Coupled with its paralleling tracks, it had enabled both manufacture and transportation of raw materials and finished products, such as vulcanized rubber, naugahide, brass, and metal clock parts. Today, after considerable revitalization, it provides recreation, fishing, and nature-related activities.
Approaching the south end of town, where the valley narrowed, the train moved under the Reynold’s Bridge, a concrete arch structure carrying Waterbury Road and constructed in the early-1920s. One of the few remaining bridges after the Great Flood of 1955, it marked the location of the small, no-longer existent station of the same name.
Trundling past the WHYCo Factory, the three coaches continued in their southerly direction, momentarily traversing the switch which led to the east side lead track to the new Thomaston Shop. The culmination of seven years of planning and construction, the five-track rail yard and 11,700-square-foot restoration building replaced the previous, 20-foot-long, deck girder bridge facility atop the former power canal one mile from Waterville where proper inspection of a four-axle locomotive had required up to six hours to complete. Tree and bush clearing at the new, two-acre site along the Naugatuck Railroad’s main line began in 1998, followed by prerequisite rock blasting and crushing, drainage, and grading. A 1,000-foot-long roadbed serves as the lead track to the area, built, as is the remainder of the yard’s track and switches, of 107-pound rails. The 65- by 180-foot shop, accessed by four 18-foot-high by 14-foot-wide main doors, is insulated, heated, and lighted for indoor, all-weather use, and two, 131-pound rail tracks run through it. A 60-foot-long, 48-inch-deep inspection pit facilitates under-car inspection and maintenance.
The concrete abutment at the north end of the Thomaston Shop indicates the location of the former Waterbury-Thomaston trolley line, which had crossed both the railroad and the river.
The Jericho Bridge, marking the spot where the flood had significantly altered the landscape, provided river-crossing access into Watertown.
Continuing to bore its way through a virtual tunnel of leaf-clinging trees and bare, skeletal, white and gray limbs, the diesel engine pulled its coaches toward Waterville, momentarily rustling the crunchy, mosaic blankets representing the collected “flesh” of the once foliage-rich trees now lying beside the track in post-life surrender. Like an oil-black mirror, the river reflected the season’s colorful denouement.
The track, reconfigured because of the flood damage, crossed Frost Bridge Road, arcing into a sharp s-curve before entering the town of Waterville over the Chase Bridge.
Threading its way through the Naugatuck Railroad’s Chase Yard, comprised of a motley collection of steam engines and coaches, the train clacked past the sprawling, former Chase Metal Works factory complex at a snail’s pace, south of which was Waterville Station.
The town itself, as evidenced by its large brass mills, had once been sustained by this industry, and was today a sub-section of greater Waterbury itself.
Ceasing motion, the train terminated its southerly, outbound journey, the locomotive disconnecting and passing its coaches on the Huntington Avenue siding before recoupling itself to the former end car.
My own coach, number 4980, had been built in 1924 by Canadian Car Foundry for Canadian National Railways and was typical of the type used for long-distance travel, inclusive of that on New England services operated by Central Vermont and Grand Trunk Railways. Converted in 1969, it served Montreal commuter routes until it had been retired in 1991, at which time it had been acquired by Thomas V. Brown and donated to the Railroad Museum of New England.
Inching away from its southern terminus, my living history excursion train recrossed the town of Waterville, moving past the Chase Metal Works Factory and the coaches lining the rail yard.
The silver rails ahead seemed to slice through the dense forest. The hills, as if torched, flamed orange, gold, and chestnut, the restored cars resettling into rhythmic, lateral rocks as their wheels screamed at every curve and track imperfection.
The Thomaston Station, soon moving by on the left side, quickly yielded to the red brick Plume and Atwood factory across the road.
Tracing its roots to the brass mill the Thomas Manufacturing Company had organized in 1854 to roll metal for clock movements, it had been known as “Holmes, Booth, and Atwood” when this concern had purchased it in 1869, adopting the “Plume and Atwood” name two years later. Incorporated in 1880, it had produced a comprehensive line of lamps, lamp trimmings, gas burners, and brass lamp parts, becoming one of the railroad’s major freight customers for more than a century—the railroad itself thus complementing and facilitating Thomaston’s very purpose. It had been the center of Plume and Atwood’s Waterbury-relocated manufacturing division and main office.
Dorset-Rex had acquired the plant in the late-1950s, but the Hurricane Diane flood had severely damaged its tooling, equipment, and buildings.
Climbing a considerable grade, the diesel engine pulled its cars between some tall rock faces, following the left-curving track past green pine and conifer to the face of Thomaston Dam, plying the eight miles of rail between Thomaston and Litchfield laid as a result of the flood. Part of a network of flood control dams constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Naugatuck Valley Basin, the million project, completed in 1960, had been integral to the town’s recovery after six inches of rain had caused the river to overflow and its banks to collapse. The dam itself prevented further downstream damage.
The first train to ply the new route had been a 28-car-long freight service operated by the New Haven Railroad and pulled by Alco RS-3 diesel locomotives 561 and 533, destined for Torrington and Winsted.
Pushed by its engine, my own train slowly negotiated the track past the rock faces; the abandoned, Plume and Atwood Brass Mill; and over the road crossing in the reverse direction, ceasing motion with a gentle screech from its brakes in front of the Thomaston Station and ending its 20-mile excursion.
Descending the three steps to the platform, the adults emerged from their scenic and historic ride. Descending the same steps, the Halloween-costumed kids emerged from theirs.
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Question by Emma K: Social Activists during the construction of the Canadian Railroad?
Were they social activists during the construction of the railroad in Canada who stood up against segregation and racism towards the Chinese? If so, who? and what did they do to make a difference?
Best answer:
Answer by Anti-Liberal
yes, they were.
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What I Learned About The Canadian Media Industry
Report by Sean Hummer
On June one, 2007, the Government of Canada responded to US pressure and introduced anti-camcording legislation. This exhibits how the movie piracy concern leaped to the front of the line.
Question by .an-na. .bell-za.♥.: I want to request for the Canadian Film Market to make a film out of a book?
How can I e mail a Canadian producer?
Can I try with American?
Please support =)
No, I am not. But I have heard people request for movies to be created from books, classes do. I just desired to see the book as a film . . .
Ideal answer:
Solution by old lady
There are a amount of magazines dealing with the film industry, each in Canada and the US. Verify for contacts by reading those magazines – they need to be accessible at your neighborhood library.
What do you believe? Solution beneath!
(Eds: Updates with detail on incentive program, adds much more on motion pictures staying …
Filmmakers with regional ties and national reputations are hiring cast and crew members from Oklahoma, and they're putting the state — and its increasing film market — in the spotlight. Filmmakers with all 3 tasks produced clear that the Oklahoma Film …
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Some Of My Favorite Places To Stay – Canadian Hotels
Write-up by Adriana Noton
Staying in a hotel may mean getting away from telephones, neighbours, even the kids. Hotels may contact to thoughts great memories of holidays, of weddings, or romantic excursions. The trick to booking the correct accommodation is gearing your choice towards your goal for travel.
For illustration, not everyone has a vacation in mind. Your trip to Vancouver, Toronto or Winnipeg could concentrate on organization. If you are arranging a seminar or meeting, your ideal bet might property a meeting area. Hotels featuring these spaces frequently give business solutions, this kind of as fax and photocopying. Ask about for a place which will supply audio-visual support, lowering the quantity of technological baggage you will need to carry with you.
Other enterprise arrangements might go far better in a sophisticated setting. Appear for a golf course nearby permitting guests to play on their manicured green. Other concerns are bars, restaurants or lounge locations on the premises or nearby. Someplace quiet that serves a very good choice of meals to impress your organization client along with liqueurs to toast accomplishment may well element into your investigation.
Weddings may possibly grow to be much more like company, but really really should be pleasurable when all the plans fall into location. Arrange a hotel which spots you close to a stunning garden setting for photographs, this kind of as Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver. If your hotel grounds contain this kind of features, this helps you to include your guests and occasions. The meeting rooms which accommodate enterprise gatherings can often convert to reception rooms significant enough for the post-wedding dinner and dance. Look for on-web site catering.
Romantic get-aways might stem from the wedding, like the honeymooning couple or guests combining a wedding visit with their own short break. Some venues provide packages and discounts for wedding guests, bride and groom. This helps facilities to compete with surrounding hotels when convenience comes into consideration.
A romance package in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, can overlook a vineyard or a huge expanse of lake and sand. Inquire all around and you could find the hotel which supplies unique touches to your room. These consist of chocolate dipped strawberries, flowers or a bottle of wine. Area service helps make a fantastic addition to hotel amenities when a couple desires to venture out as little as feasible. When you search about for the correct space, find out what your view will be from the window or balcony.
Sight-seeing tours of historic Quebec City or whale watching from Victoria Harbor can commence with a quick walk and no parking. Contemplate location when booking your time away. A hotel situated close to the attractions you came to admire requires the pressure out of your plans, especially if you are unfamiliar with the roads. Devote a lot more time visiting the BC Natural Background Museum or viewing the Tall Ships off the Maritime coast and much less time driving. In your list of queries, don’t forget to ask if your accommodation features a tourist service delivering details about and even booking arrangements for your days out.
Household friendly facilities do their greatest to make traveling with small ones easy. Amongst their amenities are restaurants with menus for younger guests, a kiddie pool or pool with slide, and even activity coordinators. Plan well and you could uncover your self with a babysitter on staff and obtainable for you to get out with out the youngsters for a evening.
Question by deetrosa: Do any Canadian hotels truly quote prices in USD as a rule/regularly?
I function at a hotel in Canada and do not realize why so many Americans inquire “Is that in Canadian or American dollars?” following I quote a rate. They do not inform me they are American, so it is not like they might believe I’ve quoted in USD for their sake.
In which do they get the impression that a Canadian hotel would constantly quote American costs?
Best answer:
Solution by Mr Canoe
Because they do not understand that there’s a lot far more to this planet outside their very own borders. It is the very same cause they refuse to alter their cash at a bank and insist on utilizing their stinking funds in shops even though they finish up with a truly poor rate. They would rather lose cash than drop out on the opportunity to say “hey, look at me, I’m a body fat American tourist”, as if it weren’t apparent currently.
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