Back in the days of steam heat
An exciting start to the day. Not for me but for my son and this family. A fire broke out in their building in the other section but the family had to be evacuated and sent to shelter elsewhere. That included the cat who had to travel reluctantly in a sports bag. I’m getting all of this second hand but there was no serious damage to the building and they expect to be reintegrated into their apartment later today. After the authorities turn back on the electricity and the water. I have been lucky in my life. All of the fires have taken place after I have moved out. In some cases decades later. That means that the house where I was born is gone and the first apartment where I lived is gone and the home of my grandparents and their family is now gone fire is a real hazard and if you have not checked your emergency exits end your smoke alarms and all of the other things that make us safer please do so now. Moving on. I was watching a video they talked about travel by train. The reality is that I have never had the opportunity to travel away from this province and on to the rest of Canada. Train travel by the time I reached university had already changed over to transit buses in this part of the world. That bothers me but not enough to make a big scene. My travel by train back in the 70s was often for a day or more at a time. Economy travel with the knapsack and the lunch and a lot of patients. Add warm clothes because back then trains were heated by steam and that often stopped working at the most inopportune moments. Like in the middle of the night or on that last few hours of travel between major cities. You simply pulled your coat tight around you and sat back and waited for relief. For all of you that have traveled your lifetime on planes, you do not know what you missed. Planes may come down suddenly but trains tend to stop in the middle of nowheres for hours at a time. And we have long winters.
