Curated Group · VIA Rail's The Canadian
Winnipeg → Saskatchewan → Jasper → Banff → Vancouver
The Case for Going
Board the same transcontinental railway that carried immigrants into the Saskatchewan prairie. Fall asleep to an enormous prairie sky. Wake to the Canadian Rockies.
The Canadian is one of the last great transcontinental train journeys. It crosses the prairies that immigrant families staked everything on, climbs through the Rockies that blocked the way west, and ends in Vancouver — the city that represented arrival. The landscape tells the story. The train gives you time to read it.
Early & Away is building a literary rail retreat with four curated reading tracks, Fairmont hotels at every stop, and a guest author whose novel traces this exact journey. This isn't sightseeing with a reading list. It's a literary experience that happens to move at 60 miles an hour.
VIA Rail's The Canadian — sleeper cars, a dome observation car, and the kind of slow travel that makes reading feel like the point rather than a way to pass time.
An overnight crossing of the Saskatchewan prairie — the same flat, enormous landscape that immigrant families saw from this same rail line a century ago. Read about it, then watch it pass.
Jasper National Park and the Icefields Parkway to Banff. Fairmont lodges. The landscape shifts from prairie to mountain in a single morning — and you'll be reading about why that mattered.
Immigration, prairie literature, Indigenous perspectives, nation-building. Four ways to read the same journey — and evening discussions where the tracks intersect.
Reading Tracks
Anchor: Ceone Fenn — To Reap the Finest Wheat
A Ukrainian woman arrives in Saskatchewan in 1925 with nothing but a promise of land. Ceone Fenn's novel traces her journey along this same rail line — and she may be aboard to discuss it.
Anchor: Sinclair Ross — As For Me and My House
The literature of the Canadian prairies — isolation, endurance, and the complicated relationship between people and a landscape that doesn't care whether they stay or go.
Anchor: Thomas King — Green Grass, Running Water
The land the railway crossed wasn't empty. Indigenous perspectives on the same geography — the stories, the displacement, and the literature that holds both in tension.
Anchor: Michael Ondaatje — In the Skin of a Lion
The people who built the infrastructure — the bridges, the tunnels, the rail lines themselves. Ondaatje's novel about the immigrant laborers who constructed a nation they weren't always welcome in.
The Route
Days 1–2
The Fort Garry Hotel — the same grand railway hotel that anchored the city when the trains arrived. Two nights to settle in, meet the group, and begin the reading discussions before we board.
Days 3–4
Overnight across Saskatchewan. The dome car at sunset. An enormous sky. The kind of slow, uninterrupted reading time that doesn't exist anywhere else.
Days 5–6
Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. The Rockies replace the prairies. Hiking, wildlife, and the shift from one kind of Canadian landscape to another.
Day 7
One of the most scenic drives in the world — glaciers, turquoise lakes, and mountain passes. Arrive at the Fairmont Banff Springs.
Days 8–9
The final leg — through the mountain passes and into British Columbia. The retreat closes in Vancouver, the city that represented arrival for so many of the stories we've been reading.
Trip Details
| Train | VIA Rail's The Canadian — one of the world's great transcontinental rail journeys |
| Route | Winnipeg → Saskatchewan (overnight) → Jasper → Icefields Parkway → Banff → Vancouver |
| Dates | August 2027 · ~9 days (Saturday departure, Sunday return) |
| Hotels | Fort Garry Hotel (Winnipeg) · Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge · Fairmont Banff Springs |
| Guest author | Ceone Fenn — To Reap the Finest Wheat (pending confirmation) |
| Reading tracks | The Immigrant Woman's Story · The Prairie Voice · The Land Before · The Nation Builder |
| Pricing | $6,500–$8,500 per person Range depends on cabin class and single/double occupancy. Final pricing confirmed at booking. |
| Genre badges | Historical Fiction · Immigration · Prairie Lit |
| Status | Be the first to know — reach out to get early access when booking opens |
Reach out and I'll answer your questions, send you full details, and get you booked.
Get the reading list for this trip.