You squint through the train window to read the signs on parallel highway 148. They’re in French and English. It dawns on you that your ride in a Budd Rail Diesel Car from Ottawa to Montreal is about the most inauspicious way to begin a trip around the world. But no matter. It’s February 1974, and you’re about to circle the globe all with one company — Canadian Pacific.
A CP Express truck flashes by sporting the familiar multimark logo that debuted in 1968. The new logo was followed by a name change in 1971, to CP Limited, acknowledging the railway’s vast expansion into other business since its 1881 founding.
“Dayliner” RDC train 132 pulls into Montreal at 10:30 a.m., and you reluctantly trade the Romanesque splendor of Windsor Station (also CP’s corporate headquarters) for the pedestrian decor of Dorval Airport.
There’s a diverse crowd waiting for CP Air flight 204 from Toronto. A brightly painted Douglas DC-8 touches down (“Orange is beautiful,” says the ad in your CP Air timetable). You file aboard and at 8:20 p.m., the plane pulls away from the gate. The DC-8s comprise about half of CP’s 25-plane fleet. Before the airline’s 1942 formation, international travelers availed themselves of CP’s deluxe ocean liners. But World War II decimated the fleet, and that era ended in 1971. You step off the plane in Amsterdam at 8:50 a.m., as your attendant reminds you to advance your watch six hours. Flight 204 continues on to Athens and Tel Aviv. Amsterdam’s temptations are well-known, but you steel yourself and head to the port of Rotterdam, some 50 miles away.
At the port, you spy the CP Voyageur. Like you, it has just arrived from Canada, though it left Quebec the week before. It’s one of three CP container ships. Your journey, however, continues aboard an oil tanker bound for the Kuwaiti port of Mina al Ahmadi, where it will fill its 30,000-ton hold and then continue on to Yokohama, Japan. The ship is one of 15 sailing under the CP Bermuda flag, a subsidiary set up in 1964 to operate bulk vessels in charter service.
(While most CP ships haul freight, Princess steamships still ferry passengers on both Canadian coasts, and you can cruise to Alaska on Princess Patricia. What is CP’s most obscure marine operation? Likely CP Rail’s tugboat-hauled barges floating freight cars across remote British Columbia lakes.)
You’re ready to be pampered after your long sea voyage and eagerly climb aboard a Boeing 747 in Tokyo. CP Air flight 402 takes off at 8 p.m. The overnight trip takes you across the International Date Line, which means your 11:15 a.m. landing in Vancouver occurs on the same day you took off!
You’ve saved the best for last: a ride on the streamlined Canadian — 2,880 glorious miles in 71 hours, 5 minutes. Back in Montreal, you check into CP Hotels’ Chateau Champlain, raise a glass, and recalling the words of CP director William Van Horne, you declare your trip “well done in every way.”
Railroads included in this map:
Canadian Pacific
This map originally appeared in the June 2007 issue of Trains magazine.
