Heart of winter

There is a muted cover over the land. Colour, delineation and sound in the world we generally know are dampened when the snow falls heavily. Removed is a part of emotional stimulation. On snow days in February, it’s like the difference between banjo picking—the rhythm of the everyday—versus the chording of a classical guitar.

Standing on the dock in Picton harbour, the mallards and geese call from the open water beyond my view; the horseshoe-shaped landscape that frames the basin; the wash over the rise of the opposite shore transforming this place into an amphitheatre of silence as softly falls the winter.

In a past life, I spent a lot of time on the east coast. I preferred train travel then, as now. A day like today takes me back to Ben’s, a legendary delicatessen in Montreal. It was my stop-off to the east. I would arrive on the noon train from Toronto and find a spot at Ben’s to take in one of its famous smoked meat sandwiches. The Jewish kosher-style place on De Maisonneuve Boulevard— its third location since startup in 1908—had not changed from the 1950s when the building was new. The art-deco façade with a huge wrap-around sign, in the genre of Honest Ed’s in Toronto, was a landmark and a short walk from the train station.

Inside Ben’s stood a long row of chrome stools that lined a green arborite counter. I remember the expanse of terrazzo floor that seemed to be as wide as the ice-covered Picton Bay now before me. Over there, at table number six, sat Irving Kravitz, one of three sons who had taken over from their parents who began the business. At that time, Mr. Kravitz was in his late eighties but would never miss a day when he could be there to greet his customers. The ‘Please wait to be seated sign’ was, by then, irrelevant as Mr. Kravitz would wave you in from his table. On a day like today, you stomped the snow off your boots on the mat. Hunched in posture and with restricted vision, Mr. Kravitz would gesture for you to take a seat among the bright yellow, green and red chairs. A waiter—yes waiter, as only males served there, outfitted in black bow tie, white shirt and serving apron—would drop a menu at your spot. Most of the waiters had been at Ben’s through the heyday when the deli was open 23 hours a day and was the go-to place for many entertainers, literary and sports elites, living in or travelling through Montreal. Ben’s Wall of Fame showcased dozens of signed photos from the likes of Liberace, Ed Sullivan and Jack Benny, to local heroes like Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Jean Beliveau and Maurice Richard.

At Ben’s, you were never pressured to leave when finished your meal. I was content to sit and write and people-watch as I sat by the large bay windows. Eventually, I would do my round of shopping at the Atwater market and head back down to the station to board the Ocean, the 7 p.m. train bound for an overnight run to Halifax.

Set up in a bedroom compartment, the winter voyage was magical as it travelled the flatlands on the south shore of the St. Lawrence. By 10 p.m., the train sat at Levis, Quebec as the crew switched over.

A view that, to me, represented all of the beauty of our country in winter was the lights of la Ville de Quebec, high on the cliffs of the opposite shore, mirrored in the swift current and ice floes of the St. Lawrence. But the highlight of those winter trips was when my bodyclock would awaken me, sensing the train stop around Kamouraska, or Rivière-du-Loup, Quebec.

It was then that I chose adventure over sleep and would walk from sleeping car through sleeping car to arrive in the club car at the tail end of the train. By then, it was generally empty of patrons. As the distant horn from the diesel engine called and the sway and rhythm of the Ocean had you holding onto the railings, I would climb the six stairs up into the scenic dome. It was there, alone and wrapped in a blanket from my bedroom, I would spend a couple of hours as the rail line followed the expanse of the Matepedia Valley, down the watershed headed to the Baies des Chaleurs. There, in the cover of night, with a view from above the roofs of the snaking stainless steel rail cars, I found a reverie: the small houses with smoking chimneys that lined every town, towering church steeples that glistened in the frost, the animation of the lights from the train windows as they caressed the deep snow drifts on each side of the tracks. The rush of the train sent clouds of snow through our passage, the sweep of the lights creating the shadow wings of some magical mongoose that I was saddled onto as it carried me through timeless space.

Perhaps it is the sense of winter, of the quiet of new fallen snow, that returns me to such reveries. Now, from the hill above, I hear the chime of Picton’s clock tower signalling that it is time for me to bid adieu, for the present moment, to this space of dreams.