MOOSE JAW, Sask. – A movable feast for the eyes illuminated the snowy fields, forests, small towns and big cities across Canada earlier this month.
Two trains of locomotives, boxcars and coaches, each clad with 10,000 Christmas lights, travelled more than 7,500 kilometres on Canadian Pacific Railway’s coldsteel rails.
The trains stopped in about 75 communities, raising contributions and awareness for food banks.
The 14 cars on each of the two trains – one travelling east to west from Ste. Thérese, Que., to Port Moody, B.C., and the other from southern Ontario through the Midwest United States and then northwest on the Soo Line through to Weyburn, Sask. – completed their two-week journeys Dec. 19.
Read Also
Record canola harvest expected
Anecdotal reports from agronomists, crop production advisors, landowners and grain industry reps, combined with provincial reports, indicates that canola yields could break the yield record set in 2016
It is the sixth year for the holiday train project, during which time it has drawn in 194 tonnes of food and $1.5 million for food banks, including cash contributions from the CPR.
Entertainers travel on board and perform live music from specially designed stage cars.
On Dec. 11, people in Moose Jaw massed along the downtown rail yards to greet the train as it arrived.
The railway is still a major employer in the community and was responsible for much of the city’s prosperity in the first half of the last century.
Ted Smith, a retired area farmer and former railroader, said the sight of the train’s Christmas lights in town is good.
“But when you see that train out in the country, it’s thrilling. It makes me think of all that the railway has meant to this part of Canada. All my grain left for market on a train. Most of the things that built this part of the country arrived (by train). Money for charity is just one more thing the train is bringing to Moose Jaw. I just wish we didn’t need it as much as we do these days.”
Before he joined the crowd in Moose Jaw, Smith was waiting for the train outside the city so he could see it pass farms and fields in the dark of the December Sunday evening.
