We Wasted Our Money for VIA Rail Points

I'm kinda shocked that this wasn't apparently a trip report.

Thanks for having me on Miles, it was a blast riding VIA Rail for 13 minutes to get you your points 🤓 Much like the shuttle bus that it shouldn't have been possible to book, the VIA service manager came to talk to me on board and explained that my trip from Anjou to Sauvé shouldn't have been bookable either (they're not supposed to compete with commuter trains within Montreal or Toronto apparently). So as the channel tagline says, Miles pushes transit to its limits — but here we basically managed to break VIA Rail twice in the space of a week 😅 And finally, for those who like fun facts: at 14:39 the VIA Rail employee (?) says, in French, that your replacement taxi ride is being provided "courtesy of Her Majesty the Queen" — even though Charles has been king of Canada for months now

Saint-Lambert isn't Anglo! The way Aleena said it at 6:33 is correct! Saint-Lambert was named for the early French-Canadian hunter Raphaël Lambert Closse! He was originally born in Mogues in the Ardennes department of today's northern France. When he made it to Quebec, he became a public notary, as well as Sergeant Major of the garrison of Ville-Marie (now Montreal). He is known for fighting the Iroquois and exhibited many combat tactics that allowed him to win several fights. He met his wife Elisabeth Moyen while rescuing her from the Iroquois in 1657. However, this marriage didn't last long as he ended up dying in combat fighting the Iroquois in 1662. Also I love the different flags at 10:23. The Atlantic side of Canada hands down has the best provincial flags. On the Newfoundland and Labrador flag, the flag design is that of etchings on Beothuk and Innu decorative pendants worn hung from a cord around the neck. Blue for water, white for snow, red for effort, gold for their confidence. On the New Brunswick flag, the big lymphad evokes NB's historical shipbuilding industry and the ships utilized by numerous Loyalists to land in the province after they fled the US after the American Revolution. PEI's flag has a large oak tree with three saplings. One for England, and the three represent the island's counties. Taken altogether, the trees tie in with the province's motto of Parva sub ingenti ("the small under the protection of the great". The three oak saplings are interpreted as the descendants of the British oak tree and are guarded by the British lion.

Fun fact if you take the Ocean: Montreal and Halifax were previously served by the Atlantic, which cut through Maine instead of going around. At the time it was cut in 1994, it was the only passenger rail service in Maine as the Downeaster hadn't started yet. Now that's a fun fact!

A science park is like a business park, but it’s labs instead of offices.

When the station employee helped you into the taxi he said in French "Courtesy of her majesty the queen" 😅 That must be Canadian slang for "the Canadian taxpayers"

"Why is this a thing?" Robert Moses asked himself, whenever he saw public transit 💀The thing at 5:29 is because of a gas pipeline, as the sign above it states! As it said at 2:28, Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour was once Governor of Acadia (though they spelled it Arcadia...which is a Peloponnese region). When he became Governor in 1631, he relocated to St John in what is now New Brunswick. In July 1640, he (a Protestant) and Charles de Menou d'Aulnay (a Catholic) began a series of confrontations that would last five years as the result of different sections of land granted in the same area. By 1642, d'Aulnay managed to get La Tour charged against the French Crown. Knowing he would be imprisoned, La Tour sent his wife to advocate on his behalf, and she returned with a warship to help her husband defend himself. In 1643, La Tour led a party of English mercenaries against the Acadian colony at Port-Royal. His 270 Puritan and Huguenot troops killed three, burned a mill, and seized 18,000 livres of furs. In 1645, while La Tour was in Boston seeking reinforcements and drumming up more support for his cause, d'Aulnay retaliated by seizing all of La Tour's possessions and outposts. His wife died at age 23 while a prisoner. Upon learning of his wife's death, and the loss of all his possessions, La Tour went into exile and sought refuge at the Chateau Saint-Louis in Quebec City

Alright Miles, When the Northlander train returns in 2026(?) we collectively would love to see a video of you and Aleena traveling to Moosenee via Cochrane than eastward to Senneterre and onward to Montreal for an epic remote regional train trip report.

Via Rail has done an incredible job of combining the worst parts of air travel and the worst parts of rail travel.

Interesting to see inside the 'Renaissance' cars since we never actually got those Eurostar sleeper services 😔

it isn’t a MIT canadian adventure without a CANADIAN DOLLARS jumpscare

I think the shuttle from Québec Ste Foy to Québec Gare du Palais is indeed the only Via Rail "bus" you can book. There is also a shuttle from Dorval station to Montréal Trudeau Airport, but you can't actually book it, you just show up and get on for free. Until the pandemic you could also book Maritime Bus trips through the Via Rail website, so for example you could buy a through ticket from Montréal QC to Charlottetown PEI with a timed transfer to Maritime Bus in Moncton NB, then a timed transfer to another bus in Amherst NS. The bus trips still run but they no longer show up on the Via website. There also used to be Maritime Bus service to Rivière Du Loup QC (though admittedly the transfer to the Ocean would suck there since the train passes through at 3AM), but Maritime Bus lost their license to operate in Québec so now their network has been cut back to Edmundston, severing the connections which used to allow through trips from the Maritimes to Québec and Montréal via Orléans Express.

12:30 Actually many years ago the train was not crossing the Quebec bridge to Sainte-Foy and was instead stopping at the south shore in Charny, but they removed the staff at the station as a cost cutting mesure so they deviated the train to the Sainte-Foy staffed station

I hate when companies do that, collect our reward points*! (*Only for purchases above $X, not including discounted articles, dairy, meat, garden and outdoor. Only when purchased with an XXXX card between 7/11-8/11, except during peak hours.) The cabin did feel very retro so that's nice

My husband and I stayed overnight in that room. We we’re going to the Canadian Rockies. The upper bunk was very comfy. The observation car was awesome.

Fun fact, Canadian Railways operate in imperial measurements. So their speeds are in MPH and the gauge is in inches. Seems very strange but that’s the way they do it.

That band really took iconic songs, said "It's free real estate", turned them into something new, and honestly I respect the grind! On the topic of famous songs in other languages, have you ever listened to the full German version of I'm A Believer, Mit all deiner Liebe by Jack White? I was introduced to it through the Jojo Rabbit official trailer and it's even better than the original! I also believe the Spanish version of Chiquitita by ABBA is vastly better than the English version, maybe because Spanish and the other Romance languages just sound so beautiful in general, especially in music. All it took for Salvador Sobral to win Eurovision back in 2017 was to win the hearts of Europe through the emotion of Portuguese. And kudos to Phil Collins for doing the Tarzan songs in not just English but also Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Sainte-Foy was the site of the Battle of Sainte-Foy during the French and Indian War theater of the Seven Years' War when in April 1760, the French won in a difficult battle with over 800 French casualties and over 1,100 British casualties. Despite winning the battle, the French couldn't retake Quebec City (or just Québec), and so this battle was the very last French victory in the Seven Years' War. Québec comes from the Algonquin word Kébec, meaning "where the river narrows".

The best part about Via is the operating staff. For whatever reason, they go out of their way to hold this ramshackle network together. I knew one SM on the Jaasper-Prince Rupert run would run impromptu art contests while the train was delayed for hours in the middle of nowhere. He’d decorate the bullet lounge of the Park car with passenger’s art projects. I’ve only done a quick jaunt on the Ocean, and that was in those tiny British cars. You sure get bounced around in those light little things. Hope to get out east and do the whole thing someday, preferably in a Chateau sleeper!

On the one hand, I'm worried VIA Rail management is gonna stumble across this vid On the other hand, I think they have much MUCH more pressing issues to worry about

What a world we live in, the Les Merseys greatest hits album is available right here on Youtube for everyone's pleasure! Taking recent English or American hit songs and replacing the lyrics with something totally new was also common practice in Italy during the Beat era: one of the most famous examples is Adriano Celentano's "Pregherò" (I'll pray) which is just Stand By Me with some Italian lyrics that say something completely different.