Ella Zeltserman, one of the poets travelling on the Great Canadian PoeTrain, gives a reading at Edmonton City Hall during the 2015 Edmonton Poetry Festival.
It’s another long-distance road trip today, as I showcase one of my favourite photos from a trip I took in 2015 on the Great Canadian PoeTrain.
What was the PoeTrain, you ask? It was a group of poets from across Canada, who travelled from Winnipeg to Vancouver to learn from each other and share their poetry with other passengers on VIA Rail’s cross-country train, The Canadian. Partway through the trip, the PoeTrain poets and I disembarked for a few days to take part in the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
It was one of the most memorable trips I’ve ever done as a travel writer—here’s my post about the Winnipeg to Edmonton leg of the trip.
So why include this photo? Three reasons, actually.
First, as mentioned, the PoeTrain adventure was a once-in-a-lifetime Canadian trip, so I wanted to feature it in this Canada 150 roundup in some way. Crossing even part of this vast country by train is something I highly recommend to anyone. There’s something about curling up beside a big picture window—usually far from any sort of distracting Internet connection—and watching the landscape roll by that gives you a true sense of just how huge this country is. For some reason, it differs from the sense you get in a car (I’ve also driven across the Prairies) or from the air.
Second, this photo warms my heart because I love that Edmonton has a poetry festival, and that the city offers space in its grand city hall (shown in the photo) for poets to give public readings of their work.
Third, I just really connected with this light-filled building, which was designed by Dub Architects and opened in 1992. I photographed it from a million angles, but architectural photography is not my strong point. However, I was happy with the interplay of light and shadow in this shot.
So, if you’re ever doing a long-distance road trip to Edmonton, check this building out. You might just run into a poet.
Throughout July and August 2017, I’ll be posting one photo a day that I’ve taken somewhere across Canada, in celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary. Want to see more photos in this series? Type “Canada 150 photo” in the search window on the right-hand side of this page.
