A brief diversion...

Before we begin this post properly, a small announcement- I've recently moved to a different position at work, which has resulted in a substantial change of schedule. Normal service should be restored soon-ish, but everything may be somewhat erratic while I get used to things and find the time both to go and do things and write about them. There should be semi-regular (ish) updates on the new Instagram to go alongside this blog, over at https://www.instagram.com/eccentric_canada/

That having been said before I get too deep into my explorations of the local area, there is a rather important gentleman I need to introduce to you all- my Great Uncle Jack. First of all, there should be a few extra 'greats' in there, but I can't be bothered to check how many or type them all out, so Great Uncle Jack he shall remain.

Great Uncle Jack was a Cornish mining engineer and, unusually, supernatural pest control consultant. Not a common job, even in late 18th/early 19th century Cornwall, but it seems that if you had Knockers or Spriggans causing trouble in your mine, Jack was the man to call. At some point during his career, someone, presumably a Cornish expat, invited him to travel to Canada to help with surveying and research in the area of the proposed site of a trading post (Jasper House, later built in 1813).
Although accurate dates are missing from most of Jack's records, we know that he spent a few years in the country, both before and after the construction of the trading post. Best guess at present is that he was in Canada between 1810 and 1815, and travelled a fair proportion of the country in that time. I will be doing my best to follow his route, although probably not in the right order, and relay his notes to you as best I can.

That having been said, I feel like I should do my best to tell you a little more about the man himself, and give some idea (or possibly warning) of what to expect.

These are not pictures of Great Uncle Jack. They are, in fact, pictures of Tsar Nicholas II and Walt Whitman respectively, since no pictures of Jack have survived. Assuming any were taken in the first place, that is. However, based on the rare and fragmented descriptions of him that I have found in other people's writing, these represent my best guesses as to what he would have looked like.

Not Great Uncle Jack, but Tsar Nicholas the Second. Possibly a bit like how Jack would have looked in about 1810, though. Although dressed rather differently, of course.

Also not Great Uncle Jack, but Walt Whitman, and almost certainly how both he and Jack looked in 1887.

As mentioned, he began his career in Cornwall, clearing mines of various supernatural creatures (allegedly). During this time he gained a fair degree of experience in mine engineering and the operation of various steam engines, as well as some very strange ideas about the supernatural and the nature of the universe.

It was this that lead to his being invited to travel to Alberta by an employee of the Hudson Bay Company, whose name has been lost to time, who happened to also be a member of the Cryptozoological Association of the Rockies. The members of this group, or the CZARs as they liked to call themselves (and as they were never called by anyone else, despite repeated requests) had a fascination with exploring the Canadian wilderness, from the Yukon through to Nunavut. They believed the entire area to be one of the last great wildernesses and home to almost all non-tropical mythical beasts. The Rocky Mountains held a particular fascination for them, as the believed it to be a key nesting area and migration route for everything from Sasquatch to Mountain Unicorns- the mountain goat equivalent of normal unicorns, and a creature that I can find no record of anywhere else.

These were the people who had hired Jack to scout the area for creatures such as Sasquatch, Ogopogo (a North American cousin to the Loch Ness Monster), Wendigo and Adlets, and to advise on certain technical aspects of proposed mining and railway projects. Over the course of his association with them, and the international community of 1800's cryptozoologists, Jack undertook a great many peculiar expeditions. Each of which seems to have chipped away slightly at his already reasonably loose grip on reality. By the time he finally disappeared (1891, trying to ascend Mount Everest by dirigible, in order to climb it in reverse) his notes had become almost incomprehensibly mystic and arcane. This seems to be due to a combination of age, medication for his various ailments being mostly morphine and opium, and a concoction he called 'Piskie Blood'. It was this last one that he insisted that kept him going, but since it seems to have been the local hallucinogen of choice dissolved in the strongest liquor available (or his own distillations, if nothing available met his standards) this seems highly unlikely.

As it seems that he never intended or expected anyone else to read these notes, he never bothered with accurate dates. To compound the confusion, he seems to have re-visited many of the key locations from his early years in the international monster hunting business in the latter half of his life. Working out which of his notes came from which visit is more of a challenge than one might expect, and I have adopted a simple rule of thumb that the less realistic it all seems, the later the assumed date. Handwriting offers no help since although one might expect it to change over the years, his notes seem to have overwhelmingly been written in peculiar circumstances, such as on horseback, or up a tree, and in many cases have been rendered illegible by time, rain, tea stains, and in one case a large dollop of custard. The latter is particularly frustrating since it completely obscures the passage supposedly detailing his encounter with a 'Pudding Squid'.

Despite all of this, I shall be doing my best to extract sense from all of this, and where possible I will include pictures of the original notes and sketches, where legibility and the ravages of time permit.

Thank you for your patience while I get things sorted out, and in the meantime here is a free-range Canadian shoelace:

The Journey to Jasper

It's a pretty long way from Vancouver to Jasper. The train journey took almost as long as the flight to Canada in the first place! And if you look at a map, you can see why.

And here's the UK at the same scale, for comparison. It's about the same distance as Land's End to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, though through somewhat tougher terrain.

And what terrain it is! Admittedly there did seem to be an inverse relationship between the beauty of the scenery and the quantity of sunlight, which was a bit of a shame, but anyway.

So, as you will see, the scenery immediately outside Vancouver isn't terribly...uh...scenic. Inspiring in a bleak-ish sort of way, but not what most people would call beautiful. 

Fortunately, it improves very quickly

Yes, that is a frozen waterfall in the background

And at about the same rate as the scenery improved, the temperature dropped. Which, in places such as the rather impressive frozen waterfall above, also somewhat enhanced the beauty of the area.

This spot is referred to as the Mouth of Hell, if I remember correctly, and is somewhere on the Thompson River. I've tried to look it up and confirm it, but there seems to a surprising shortage of information on the area, at least to that level of detail. A shame, really, as if I had realised I would have taken better notes. I shall be sure to do something about that if I return the same way.

After that picture along the train, the light faded too much for me to get decent pictures,

Kamloops is an... uh... interesting looking place. I'm sure that the rest of it looks better in daylight.

Jasper train station is surprisingly impressive and was a very welcoming sort of place to arrive.

Seeing as this is a rather sparse post, being mostly pictures, this seems like a good time to digress on to a more personal note for a little while.
Settling in is taking a little while, what with adjusting to having a more or less normal job for the first time, a poorly timed cold (hardly surprising) and so on. But I keep coming across things that make me feel very at home here. Just little things, and things that are quite different from back home, really. But they are things that make me feel like this is the right sort of place for me, and that once I have settled in a bit more I will very much enjoy my time in Canada.
Little things like these:

It's a bit hard to read, but it's vanilla and oak flavour. And very nice indeed.

Kombucha, in particular, seems to be everywhere. Well, in Jasper, anyway (along with a very nice yoga studio, which I may cover some other time). But the Canadian reputation for gentle friendliness seems to be extremely well founded. As well as a seemingly less widely spread reputation for low-level oddness, which is making me feel really rather comfortable here. It would seem that a quest to explore the eccentricities of Canada was a rather good idea.

Quite a stroke of luck that, really.