The Trip Home from Guelph.

I hate to keep blathering on about politics. There is so much more to life. Quite frankly at this moment in time though, I am desperate for some changes right here in Ontario. I need better access to my grandchildren. Traveling Ontario without a car is next to impossible. It cannot be done within a reasonable amount of time and I totally blame the government for this appalling situation.

Yesterday, I wanted to return to Toronto from Guelph. Guelph is about an hour away by car. One hour. If a person is NOT driving, there are a variety of interesting options. There are GO buses, GO trains, a VIA train, Greyhound buses, a mixture of some of these possibilities and/or I could hitchhike. 

The VIA train was out. It would get me to Toronto in an hour for $27. That old hunk-of-junk train with mechanical issues, leaves Guelph twice a day at nine in the morning and eleven at night. Neither time was convenient. Check out time at the hotel isn't until 11 am. The service at the hotel restaurant is slow at the best of times and getting a cab to the station for nine am. is a hassle. I wanted to skip the VIA option and try an alternative form of transportation. The Greyhound bus was an option. The times were more convenient and the price was the same. The bus would have delivered me to Union Station in an hour and I could get the GO train home from there. I had a few bus issues and I wasn't that keen. 

    

The final option was GO.  GO stands for Government of Ontario........ need I say more? It's NOT a system for traveling Grandmas........ it's a system built for voting commuters.  However, the GO bus could be used by Grandmas or maybe just by idiots. The GO bus use to travel to Guelph along the 401 corridor and get you to Guelph in about an hour. I was good with that. NOW, because of what the government sees as "better access to service", the GO bus takes a less direct route, stopping in Acton, Georgetown, Brampton and then Toronto, which is now a three hour journey. Three hours on a bus, how convenient for Grandmas is that??? 

My only option left was the GO train.  Lucky for me, the GO train service extends to Milton which is a small town that is only a fifteen minute drive from Guelph.  Just before noon, Heather and I drove to Milton, went to Cora's for lunch and then arrived at the GO train station.  The short drive along the 401 corridor to Milton was rife with millions of transport trucks, driving in every lane except the inside lane. The inside lane on the 401 is the lane of choice for tailgating yahoos (without road rules). We were very happy to exit at Milton. 

Arriving in the parking lot at the GO train station, we encountered a sea of parked cars. To the north we could see tons of transport trucks, carrying their cargo along the 401 to destinations in Toronto and Montreal.  To the south we could see a freight train traveling along the shared GO train track. The freight train had many cars but it carried nothing. The ghostly shapes of freight boxes outlined in metal, made up the structure of the train, through which we had framed vignettes of the spring countryside. There were less cargo supports than seen in the picture below, but the train carried about 50 of these empty cars.

Perhaps if some of those cargo boxes were taken off the transport trucks congesting the highway and put aboard the empty train, the highway would be safer, the air would be cleaner and the cargo would arrive just as quickly.  Building a functional rail system for transportation in Canada was THE "Canadian Dream" once upon a time. However, it isn't something Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff dream about today. I am just as positive Dalton McGuinty (Ontario government leader) isn't dreaming of a functional rail service for Ontario either, with the ONE exception of satisfying the needs of voting commuters. 

The GO train station in Milton, we found out upon arrival, is only open from 5 am. to 8 am. and there was nowhere to purchase a ticket.  It was 3 pm. There was a GO bus arriving that would have taken me to the Oakville GO train. From there, I could have caught a GO train home. Heather, a little frustrated from trying to locate a parking space, said no and decided to drive me home. There was some traffic congestion along the way and it took longer than an hour to get me home.  I made pasta for dinner and Heather waited until seven thirty (after rush hour) to head back to Guelph. She arrived home safely. 

Elizabeth May dreams about a functional rail service for Canada. So do Heather and I. When the jet fuel runs out or becomes extremely pricey, it will be too late to START building a rail system so vast and expensive and so good for Grandmas. We should have kept the "National Dream" alive all along.  Heather and I did not watch the debates last night. We were too busy just trying to survive and arrive alive in Stephen Harper's Canada.