MONDAY, MAY 27th:

Quite a leisurely morning before our 11.35am train. We ate breakfast in the York cafe in the underground shops area of the hotel. Afterwards, needing an ATM I walked along Front Street and, after getting cash from the hole-in-the-wall, I noticed that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation building was opposite the bank. Not thinking about looking him up, in any case I only had about twenty minutes, but someone I was at school with both at junior school and grammar school, Keith Horner, has presented music programmes on CBC from Toronto for several years. I just wondered if there might be a photo of him in the foyer and inner atrium - there seemed to be photos all around depicting many aspects of CBC's programming. There wasn't, however there was an interesting museum off the foyer showing some of the history of Canadian broadcasting down the years.

      I got back to the hotel with a few minutes to spare before we all walked across the road to Toronto railway station for the train to Montreal, and then the ongoing train from there to Quebec. The rain left at 11.35am and our route took us along the north shore of Lake Ontario through Oshawa, Coburg, Belleville, Kingston, Brockville (with its platform mural of the visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1951), Cornwall , soon after which we crossed from Ontario into Quebec and were soon pulling into Montreal station, very much to time around 5.00pm. Suddenly we were in the predominantly French-speaking area of Canada, indeed 95% of the population of Quebec are French speaking. I had already chatted in French to two ladies in the seats opposite. Incidentally, on the rain journey from Toronto to Montreal there was free wi-fi on the train and I beamed up Yaroslav Alekseev in Yekaterinburg in Russia on Skype. I could see him sitting in his flat in the Urals and by pointing my iPad out of the window at the back of the train, he could see the passing scenery in Canada! 

     There was time for a bowl of soup and an orange juice in one of the food outlets in the station before our continuing journey on another train to Quebec City. The train left at 6.15pm and there were good views of the St Lawrence Seaway as we crossed over the river on leaving Montreal. After its opening by The Queen and President Eisenhower in 1959,  it enabled massive ocean-going freighters to sail up the St Lawrence right up to Duluth, Minnesota. An amazing feat of engineering, though its usage has declined somewhat in more recent years with the movement towards transport by rail and road. Our journey through the province of Quebec took us across the St Lawrence and inland through saint Hyacinthe, Drummondville, Sainte-Foy. 

   Our train pulled into the chateau-like station in Quebec City almost on time at 9.35pm. There a bus was waiting to take us to the Hotel Manoir Victoria in the Old City. Once we had found our rooms Robert and I had a short walk in the area immediately around the hotel and had hot chocolate and a muffin at Tim Horton's next door. We walked up the Rue Saint Jean as far as the Porte Saint Jean, one of the old gates in the city walls.